Snapdeal

E-commerceIndia

New to Unitard

✂️ Markdown

Peak $6.5 BillionToday

~-86%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
2014
📈
Peak valuation
$6.5 Billion ’16
💔
Became a Unitard
2017
💸
Last valuation
~$910M

Current status

Still private and far below peak; rejected a ~$900M Flipkart buyout in 2017; IPO prospectus withdrawn Dec 2022.

The rise & fall

8 moments · 2010–2022

The key moments.

2010

Founded in Delhi

Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal start with daily deals, then pivot to an e-commerce marketplace.

Wikipedia

2014

SoftBank makes it a unicorn

A $627M SoftBank investment turns Snapdeal into one of India's e-commerce giants.

Reuters

2016

The peak: ~$6.5B$6.5B

Huge rounds led by SoftBank and Alibaba value Snapdeal at about $6.5B.

Reuters

2016–17

Amazon and Flipkart squeeze

Mounting losses and brutal competition erode its position in the market it helped build.

Reuters

Jul 2017

Walks away from a Flipkart rescue

Under pressure from founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, the board rejects a SoftBank-brokered ~$900-950M sale.

Reuters

2017

Slips out of the club

After the deal collapses, a slimmed-down 'Snapdeal 2.0' survives — at a fraction of the peak valuation.

Reuters

Dec 2022

IPO shelved

Snapdeal confidentially withdraws its draft prospectus amid weak market conditions.

Reuters

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InfotechLead (peak $6.5B 2016 on SoftBank + Alibaba money; rejected ~$900-950M Flipkart deal July 2017; IPO prospectus withdrawn Dec 2022)