Snapdeal, A 3-Year-Old Startup In India, Had Amazon And eBay Battling To Give It Tens Of Millions Of Dollars

Economictimes Snapdeal founder and CEO Kunal Bahl

Snapdeal is an online marketplace that is only two years old, but it's the highest-trafficked e-commerce site in India. Investors just gave it $50 million in a Series C financing; it has raised more than $100 million total.

Amazon and eBay both reportedly wanted a piece of the company, but eBay was able to nudge out its competitor and lead the round. eBay has aggressive growth plans over the next three years, and it believes a good portion of that growth (12%) will come from BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia India and China). So it's easy to see why they'd want to get a piece of Snapdeal.

According to TechCrunch, Snapdeal's gross merchandise value is growing 400% year over year, and it's expected to generate ~ $400 million in sales this year from its 20 million users.

When we spoke with the company in late 2011, it had 10 million members and was growing by 1.5 million members per month.

"Eighty percent of our revenue comes from everyday merchandise, and much of that comes from people interested in and driven by promoted daily deals," Snapdeal founder and CEO Kunal Bahl told Business Insider then.

"[Indian customers] have a lot of aspirations to own products. Amazon's and Walmart's, and Overstock's are already well established, but we have an advantage in the sense that India is a green field of opportunity."

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.