After Flipkart, Amazon, eyes now on Snapdeal

With Flipkart raising one billion dollars (over Rs 6,000 crores) through its latest funding

round and American ecommerce giant Amazon.com announcing an investment of two billion dollars (over 12,000 crores) in India, all eyes are now on the third Indian player, Snapdeal.com.

Snapdeal, the country's largest online marketplace, which till date has garnered over 330 million dollars (over Rs 2,000 crores) across rounds, is now lagging behind Flipkart, India's largest online retailer which has, in total, raised over 1.7 billion dollars (over Rs 10,000 crores). Experts now feel that with Flipkart and Amazon racing ahead in competition, Snapdeal investors will be forced to take an aggressive stand on the current situation to push ahead. Sources claim that in terms of gross merchandise value (GMV), Amazon and Snapdeal are at equal position with both having sold 600 million dollars (over 3,600 crores) worth of merchandise so far this year.

Acquisitions will be the next big move, these players would want to make. Recently, this week, Snapdeal named Palaash Ventures' Abhishek Kumar as its head of corporate development, who will be responsible for acquisitions and investments for the New Delhi-based company, after Amazon roped in Bessemer Venture Partners' Abhijeet Mazumder to lead its acquisitions and private investments in Southeast Asia.

Snapdeal founded by Wharton alumnus Kunal Bahl and IIT-Delhi graduate Rohit Bansal moved to become an online marketplace for products in 2012. While the platform has been witnessing growth across categories but according to the company, segments like electronics and apparel are doing extremely well compared to others. It offers products across over 500 product categories through 20,000 sellers and delivers to more than 4,000 cities in the country.