Snapdeal may acquire Exclusively.in to grow fashion business

Leading online marketplace Snapdeal.com is said to be eyeing acquisition of Exclusively.in to gain a strong foothold in the high margin fashion space. Competition among Flipkart-Myntra duo, Amazon and Snapdeal as well as Jabong is heating up and each one is trying to grow its fashion portfolio.

Exclusively.in Founder Sunjay Guleria had earlier sold the Sher Singh apparel brand to Myntra in 2012. At a time, when players are moving towards consolidation, with some getting sold and others shutting shop, India’s e-commerce market is gradually witnessing, emergence of handful of strong players, who will take it to the next level of growth.

The company, which raised funds from Japan’s SoftBank, plans to raise more funds to aggressively pursue its growth plans. Sources say that the e-retailer is aiming for a funding boost of around 400 million dollars (Rs 2,500 crores). On the other hand, industry sources speculated that after its last funding round of 627 million dollars (over Rs 3,800 crores) in Snapdeal, Japan’s SoftBank was eyeing to increase its stake in the company to more than 38 percent from the current 33 percent. Sources claimed that Independent Director on the board Akhil Kumar Gupta, a senior executive at Bharti Enterprises, has also picked up a small personal stake in the online marketplace.