The Venture Intelligence Blog

The latest $700 million funding for Flipkart got announced not in the form of press releases as on previous occasions, but through leaks and confirmations . Also, the new round does not seem to have attracted any new investors. The closure of rival Snapdeal's $500 million round is reported to have been protracted over mismatch in valuation expectations. Why the seeming nervousness among investors over India's two E-Commerce poster children? Is it the crash of Alibaba's stock price in recent months? Or something else? Media executive-turned-Private Equity investor Haresh Chawla has some answers in his new post at Founding Fuel . Extracts: On why an IPO is impractical for Flipkart, SnapDeal Most listed Unicorns in the West eventually trade at earning multiples that range between 40 and 60 times their earnings. Listed Indian internet companies like Naukri, Justdial and Makemytrip trade at similar multiples....Flipkart, now eight years old, to justify its $15 bill...

It all seems to have started with Snapdeal's Kunal Bahl and Mr Ratan Tata (in Aug 2014)      Source: NBW And then Paytm/One97's Vijay Shekhar Sharma took it international with Alibaba's Jack Ma (Feb 2015)      Source:   FirstPost According to  Economic Times , the latest $500 million investment in Snapdeal (led by Foxconn, Alibaba and SoftBank ) -  which has been reported about for several months now  - faced "protracted negotiations" over the company's valuation. Another angle journalists might want to consider (for such delays) is how long it takes to synch up schedules of international personalities (who seem to call all the shots in Indian E/M-Commerce these days) to line up something like this:       Snapdeal founders with Alibaba's Jack Ma and  SoftBank's Nikesh Arora The Venture Intelligence PE/VC Deals Database  currently captures 25+ data points for  private company...

By Arun Natarajan An abridged version of this article appeared in the Business Line dated Jan 13, 2015 Home grown E-Commerce leaders Flipkart and Snapdeal between them raised almost $3 billion from investors during 2014. Powered by the E-Commerce segment, Online Services companies accounted for as much as 37.6% of the total $10.9 billion invested by Private Equity (including Venture Capital) investors during the year, according to figures recently compiled by Venture Intelligence . Startups are clearly back. And how. PE investments in India during 2014 were second only to their historic high of 2007. The year in which Flipkart was founded. At which time the PE investment action in the IT industry was focused almost exclusively on mature IT Services and BPO companies. Unicorn Club Effect What effect will the recent membership to the “Unicorn Club” – i.e., startups with valuations of $1 billion or more – of Flipkart, Snapdeal, etc. have on entrepreneurship in the country? Are w...