It's official! Snapdeal will be sold to Flipkart and Paytm will be acquiring Freecharge soon.Here's everything you need to know.
Since the time demonetization has hit India, digital and cashless transactions have grown, and so has mobile wallet platforms like Paytm and Freecharge. With more than 8.5 million daily transactions on its platform and with an aim to soon overtake card transactions in the country, the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-owned company has moved a step further and has signed a non-exclusive term sheet to acquire Freecharge. The company now aims to take its biggest competitor down.
While not much is disclosed about the deal as of now, the Paytm-Freecharge deal, if we may call it, is estimated to be valued between $45 million and $90 million. The deal in midway as of now and is said to be finalized within a months time, reports Economic Times.
According to one of the four sources mentioned in the report, “Freecharge had approached Paytm earlier this week for the deal”. The report also suggests that the deal will be done in cash and will be completed after Paytm completes its financial and commercial audit of a potential investment to confirm all facts, starting next week. ALSO READ: Paytm to invest Rs 10,000 crore into banking, financial services
Moving further reports also suggests that Paytm is talks with SoftBank to raise up to $1.9 billion in fresh funding that could value it between $8 billion and $9 billion. Now having said that, SoftBank has recently reported a net loss of over Rs 9,000 crores, for the year 2016-17 by investing in Indian startups like Snapdeal and Ola. SoftBank has got a nod from co-investor Nexus Venture Partners (NVP) for sale of Snapdeal to India’s largest e-commerce firm,
In other news, SoftBank has got a nod from co-investor Nexus Venture Partners (NVP) for sale of Snapdeal to India’s largest e-commerce firm, Flipkart, reports PTI. The further states that the term sheet with Flipkart could be signed within this week and the due diligence for the deal would start immediately. As per the last reports, Snapdeal was valued at $6.5 billion in its last funding round in February 2016 and SoftBank holds about 30% market share in Snapdeal. SoftBank was all this time negotiating with its investors for the sale of Snapdeal to rival firm Flipkart.
Sources said that Snapdeal founders would get about Rs 160 crores each, while NVP could get close to Rs 643 crores and stake in the merged entity. However, there is no official confirmation if Flipkart and digital payments provider MobiKwik are still running to acquire FreeCharge. ALSO READ: Flipkart gets $1.4 billion investment, but can it finally take on Amazon now?
As far asPaytm is concerned, reports suggest that in April SoftBank agreed to invest over $1.4 billion in Paytm. However, this is a separate transaction and not linked to Paytm’s intention to acquire Freecharge. Not many details about this deal are known at the moment.
Well, as they say ’if you can’t kill the competition, buy the competition’ and looks like that’s what Paytm and Flipkart are doing.