Chairman emeritus of Tata Sons Ratan Tata, has made a 'personal investment' in the online marketplace Snapdeal.com, a statement by the latter said here yesterday. Snapdeal.com announced that Ratan Tata has "made a personal investment in the company", the statement said.
"This is a very proud and exciting moment for the entire Snapdeal family. An investment by ... Tata is an excellent validation of our focused strategy on building a long term enterprise and marks the start of a very important phase for the company," Kunal Bahl, co-founder and chief executive officer, Snapdeal.com said in the statement.
The four-year-old of Snapdeal.com, which was started February 2010, has seen 600 percent growth year-on-year for the last two years and currently houses over 5 million products across 500-plus diverse categories from over 50,000 sellers. The company is run by a young team of 1,500-plus members, the statement added.
The announcement came a day after Snapdeal.com entered into a partnership with Tata Value Homes to sell apartments units of projects spread across various cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai and Ahmedabad. With 250 million internet users, India's e-commerce industry is growing at 38 percent year-on-year. Analysts expect the market, which is now $15 billion, to touch $100 billion in the next 5 years.
The Indian e-commerce industry is expected to spend an additional $500 million to $1,000 million on infrastructure, logistics and warehousing, leading to a cumulative spend of $1000 million to $1,900 million till 2017-2020, a joint study by industry body Associated Chambers of Commerce.
