Snapdeal’s founders prefer infibeam for selling company’s stake. Sale out to infibeam will appreantly help both founder’s to keep their stake intact in the company.
Flipkart’s planned takeover of Snapdeal has hit a roadblock as latter’s co-founders are reportedly mulling over selling the stake to infibeam. Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal’s decision to go along with the Ahmedabad based e commerce firm is apparently driven by self interest. Sources close to the development claim that sale to infibeam will help both founders to keep their stake intact, while sale to Flipkart will lead to complete dilution of their stake.
However, Bahl and Bansal’s plan is reportedly facing stiff resistance from Snapdeal’s largest investor – Softbank. According to people familiar with the matter, the Japanese multinational is still very much interested in selling the stake to Flipkart. Both founders and SoftBank have chosen to remain completely tight-lipped about the sale out proceedings. Even Flipkart and infibeam have shied from making any public comments over the takeover bid.
With everyone remaining tight-lipped, the Snapdeal’s sale out sage is playing out like a suspense movie. There are also reports in the media that small investor’s interest are not being heard, with SoftBank completely dictating the terms and conditions in the ongoing sale out proceeding.
Infibeam – a late entrant into the race.
Infibeam entered into Snapdeal’s acquisition race only couple of week’s back, while Flipkart has been in the race ever since Snapdeal’s financial woes have become public. Analysts believe that Infibeam’s late entry has put substantial pressure on Flipkart to increase its bidding offer. It is widely believed that it was Infibeam factor that recently forced Bengaluru based E-commerce firm to marginally increase its bidding offer to $850 to $900 million.
However, there is no clarity either about how much Infibeam has offered to Snapdeal. There are lot of conflicting report about this in the media. Some reports suggest that the Ahmedabad based firm offered $700 million, while other reports claim that it offered $1 billion.
Although Infibeam is not as popular and well funded as Flipkart, but one cannot escape the fact that it is country’s only e-commerce player that is listed in India’s capital market.
Meanwhile, Snapdeal’s digital payment arm and subsidiary firm Freecharge has got fresh bidding offer from Amazon. Earlier, Axis Bank – India’s third-largest private bank – had emerged as the only front runner in the bidding race.