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Business News/ Companies / Snapdeal in talks to buy Unicommerce
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Snapdeal in talks to buy Unicommerce

Unicommerce is expected to operate as separate company in a deal that will be Snapdeal's largest acquisition till date

Delhi-based Snapdeal.com was valued at close to $1.76 billion after the SoftBank Group’s $602 million investment in October. Photo: BloombergPremium
Delhi-based Snapdeal.com was valued at close to $1.76 billion after the SoftBank Group’s $602 million investment in October. Photo: Bloomberg

New Delhi/Bengaluru: Online marketplace Snapdeal.com is in talks to buy Unicommerce eSolutions Pvt. Ltd, an e-commerce management software and fulfilment solution provider, according to three people familiar with the development.

New Delhi-based Unicommerce, which currently provides its software to companies such as Myntra, Snapdeal, Jabong, Groupon and HealthKart, has received investment from Nexus Venture Partners and Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.

Unicommerce was founded in 2012 by three Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, graduates Ankit Pruthi, Karun Singla and Vibhu Garg. The company offers a pay-per-use Web-based solution that helps small merchants and e-commerce companies manage orders from the time they are placed till products are delivered.

It also helps companies manage everything from vendors to inventory, and from warehouse to shipments and returns. Abhishek Goyal, founder of Tracxn, a start-up that sells data on privately held firms to investors, said: “Unicommerce’s solution will help Snapdeal get better visibility into vendor inventory and vendor accounts, and it will give them potential to make their vendors technology-enabled."

Unicommerce was also in talks with Tiger Global for a potential investment.

After the deal, Unicommerce is expected to operate as a separate company, according to two of the people mentioned above. To be sure, e-commerce experts say companies would be apprehensive about sharing their data with Unicommerce if it becomes a part of Snapdeal.

Two e-commerce companies dependent on Unicommerce to manage third-party vendors said on condition of anonymity that they have already started looking for alternatives as they are not sure of working with a competitor’s product in case the deal materializes.

“They (Unicommerce) will get a lot of push-back from clients if the acquisition happens," said Goyal. He expects other technology partners such as Browntape, which offers software solutions to online sellers, to step in.

Unicommerce founder Pruthi and Nexus Venture Partners did not answer email queries sent on Tuesday. “This is a speculation and as a policy we do not comment on such speculations," said a Snapdeal spokesperson by email.

For Snapdeal, 2014 has been an active year with respect to acquisitions. The company this month announced acquisition of gifting recommendation technology platform Wishpicker.com for an undisclosed amount. The company has so far acquired five companies including Doozton, a social product discovery technology platform; Grabbon.com; eSportsBuy.com and Shopo.in. However, if Snapdeal inks the deal, it will be its largest acquisition till date.

For the year ended 31 March, Unicommerce reported a loss of 30.3 lakh on revenue of 3.6 crore, according to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies.

Delhi-based Snapdeal was valued at close to $1.76 billion after the SoftBank Group’s $602 million investment in October. The SoftBank Group, the largest shareholder in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, recently led a $627 million investment in Snapdeal, making it the largest shareholder in the e-retailer. Snapdeal currently claims to offer more than five million products across 500-plus categories on its platform, with over 25 million registered users and 50,000-plus merchants.

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Published: 18 Dec 2014, 12:05 AM IST
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