Five months after writing down its investments in India's e-commerce firm Snapdeal, Japanese investor SoftBank is not willing to participate in the latest round of funding for the Indian online marketplace.
"There was a term-sheet offering Snapdeal debt financing for a period of three years, which was, inexplicably, withdrawn within days, giving credence that Soft-Bank has made up its mind about selling the company," the Economic Times quoted a source as saying.
Other investors of Snapdeal are being kept out of the loop by the Japanese investor with regard to its exit plans. "SoftBank has been solely fronting all the (sale) conversations till date. The other board members have been pretty much kept out of the loop thus far," the daily quoted another source as saying.
It may be recalled that SoftBank had written down around $550 million of its investments in Snapdeal and cab-hailing company Ola last November.
Snapdeal is apparently planning to raise $150-200 million even as there are rumours of the company being sold to its rival Flipkart.
Co-founded by Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl in 2010, Snapdeal's investors include eBay, Nexus Venture Partners, Kalaari Capital, Foxconn Electronics, Brand Capital, Alibaba Group, Singapore government's Temasek, BlackRock and Intel Capital, in addition to the three investors cited above.
SoftBank is the largest investor in Snapdeal whose losses doubled to Rs 3,316 crore for 2015-16 though revenues grew 56 percent to Rs 1,457 crore.
