Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, which runs online marketplace Snapdeal, has received a fund infusion of Rs 113.3 crore (about $17 million) from existing investor Nexus Venture Partners and co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, filings with the Registrar of Companies show.
The filings, made on Monday, show that Nexus pumped in Rs 96.3 crore in March while Bahl and Bansal put in Rs 8.5 crore each.
This takes Nexus’ total investment in Snapdeal to Rs 306 crore.
Email queries sent by VCCircle to Snapdeal did not immediately elicit a response. We will update the story as and when we get a response.
Bahl and Bansal were allotted 1,300 Series J preference shares and Nexus was allotted 14, 810 preference shares, the filings show.
The fund infusion comes at a time when Snapdeal is reportedly in talks with rival Flipkart for a merger, a deal that is likely to change the country's e-commerce landscape. Last week, Flipkart signed a term sheet in this regard.
Earlier this month, Snapdeal’s biggest investor SoftBank wrote off $1.4 billion on its two biggest investments in India—Snapdeal and cab-hailing app Ola.
In total, Snapdeal has raised around $1.65 billion from about two dozen investors, including SoftBank and SoftBank-backed Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn, global online marketplace eBay Inc., ad-for-equity investment arm of media firm Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd, and venture capital investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Kalaari Capital, among others.
If the Flipkart-Snapdeal merger goes through at the expected valuation of $1 billion, Bahl and Bansal will earn around Rs 423 crore from the deal.
SoftBank, which has been pushing for a consensus on Snapdeal's board for its sale to Flipkart, had managed to convince Nexus earlier this month. Earlier, Nexus and Kalaari disagreed with SoftBank over its offer to invest in the e-commerce firm and its mobile wallet subsidiary FreeCharge, wherein it proposed a valuation that was less than half of what Snapdeal racked up in its last funding round in February 2016.
Nexus first invested in Snapdeal in January 2011 during its Series B round via its Nexus India Direct Investments II fund.
The fund invested six more times, participating in Snapdeal’s Series C, D, E and E1 rounds. Additionally, a separate fund named Nexus Opportunity Fund invested in Snapdeal’s Series E round. In total, Nexus invested Rs 210 crore in Snapdeal from 2011 to 2014, picking up a stake of around 10%.
With inputs from Jyotindra Dubey and Jyoti Gupta.
