Ratan Tata may provide vital funding boost to Snapdeal

With Flipkart and Amazon battling for lead position in India’s ecommerce

market, Snapdeal, currently in the third position may get required funding from none other than Ratan Tata. He is expected to make a personal investment in Snapdeal. People in the know, claim that he may pick up stake held by an early investor in Snapdeal through a secondary sale deal.

This move by one among India’s biggest corporate houses signals rising interest in India’s ecommerce growth story. The market is expected to hit nine billion dollars (over Rs 61,000 crores) over the next two years, according to US venture capitalist Accel Partners. Another Indian business major, Wipro's Azim Premj had earlier bought a stake in Snapdeal as well as fashion portal Myntra that later merged with Flipkart. Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy recently formed an e-commerce joint venture with Amazon through his private investment firm Catamaran Ventures.

Even other biggies in the Indian business like Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail and the Aditya Birla Group are showing keen interest in pursuing the online retail channel and have begun announcing their e-commerce plans.

Snapdeal founded by Wharton alumnus Kunal Bahl and IIT-Delhi graduate Rohit Bansal moved to become an online marketplace for products in 2012. It offers products across over 500 product categories through 20,000 sellers and delivers to more than 4,000 cities in the country.