Snapdeal
- 🦄Became a unicorn2014
- 📈Peak valuation$6.5 Billion ’16
- 💔Became a Unitard2017
- 💸Last valuation~$910M
How it happened
Snapdeal was one of India's earliest e-commerce giants, reaching a peak valuation of about $6.5B in 2016 after huge funding rounds led by SoftBank and Alibaba. Mounting losses and brutal competition from Amazon and Flipkart eroded its position, and in 2017 its board — under pressure from founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal — walked away from a roughly $900-950M acquisition by Flipkart that SoftBank had brokered. The company survived in a slimmed-down 'Snapdeal 2.0' form but never regained its scale, and it confidentially withdrew its planned IPO in December 2022 amid weak market conditions, leaving it worth a fraction of its peak.
Source: Reuters / InfotechLead (peak $6.5B 2016 on SoftBank + Alibaba money; rejected ~$900-950M Flipkart deal July 2017; IPO prospectus withdrawn Dec 2022)
