Alibaba, Foxconn, SoftBank pump $500M into Snapdeal as India’s ecommerce war heats up

Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn, and Japanese telco major SoftBank have invested US$500 million in Indian ecommerce marketplace Snapdeal, according to Recode.

This balances the ecommerce triangle in India, which is a three-way battle between global giant Amazon, India’s leading player Flipkart, and the fast-expanding Snapdeal. Mobile commerce player Paytm, which also has backing from Alibaba, hopes to make that a quadrangular battle.

See: Alibaba now has 2 weapons in India for a proxy war with Amazon

Rupees race

Snapdeal raised US$627 million from SoftBank last year to stay in the big league. In June 2014, Amazon pumped US$2 billion into its Indian arm a day after Flipkart’s mammoth US$1 billion funding round.

This time around too, the funding of Snapdeal follows reports of Amazon and Flipkart building up their war chests. Amazon opened its biggest warehouse in India last month, a 280,000 square foot facility near Hyderabad, and is reported to be pumping billions more into its Indian site this year. Flipkart is rumored to have raised a fresh US$700 million from Tiger Global and Steadview Capital last month, although the company is yet to confirm a new funding round.

Alibaba’s affiliate Ant Financial picked up a 25 percent stake in Paytm’s parent company One97 earlier this year for US$700 million and is reported to be raising its stake to 40 percent.