Snapdeal received $500 million from Asia’s top tech companies

It’s common for people to focus so much on China’s growth that they forget about India, but the country is becoming much harder to ignore, especially where e-commerce is concerned. The e-commerce market in India is exploding right now, with foreign companies like Amazon pouring billions into their India operations while local companies like Flipkart have raised billions in funding to expand their operations. The latest such company to do so is Snapdeal, a New Delhi-based startup that just received $500 million in funding from some of the largest tech companies in Asia, bringing its total funding to about $1.6 billion. 

Indian e-commerce platform Snapdeal has confirmed that it received $500 million of funding from three of Asia’s largest tech companies: Alibaba, Foxconn, and SoftBank. Returning investors Temasek, BlackRock, Myriad, and Premji Invest also participated in the round. The investment was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and Re/code and brings Snapdeal’s total funding so far to about $1.6 billion. Founded in 2010, Snapdeal is one of India’s largest e-commerce companies and says it now has more than 150,000 sellers on its platforms and is able to deliver to 5,000 towns and cities in India. SoftBank is already Snapdeal’s largest investor after leading a $627 million investment last year. Snapdeal is engaged in an expensive competition with Flipkart and Amazon India. Flipkart has raised $3.2 billion in funding from investors like Naspers, Tiger Global, and DST Global, while Amazon has vowed to put $2 billion in its Indian operations (and may invest another $5 billion soon). All three businesses are spending heavily on their logistics networks. Flipkart and Snapdeal are also growing by acquiring companies in related verticals, like payments.