After Freecharge, Snapdeal snaps up mobility solutions firm to bolster mcommerce

Realizing that the future of ecommerce in India will be dictated by mobile-centric consumers, Snapdeal is making substantial investments to consolidate its position. This year, it has already bought mobile top-up site Freecharge and ecommerce platform MartMobi to strengthen the mobile arm of its business.

Today, Snapdeal announced that it acquired Letsgomo Labs, a mobility solutions startup. The deal size is undisclosed. It appears that the acquisition is part of Snapdeal’s strategy to focus on mobile.

Letsgomo Labs was founded by Manav Kamboj and Vikas Banga. It provides end to end mobility solutions including design and strategy, conceptualization of apps and mobile sites, and implementation and hosting. Its clients include major ecommerce companies.

Why the buying spree

Three quarters of orders on Snapdeal are from mobile platforms. Strengthening this channel makes sense for the company. “Delivering a great user experience across varying data connections and numerous handsets being used in the country is the guiding principle for our mobile initiatives,” says Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal in an emailed statement.

However, these acquisitions do not mean Snapdeal plans to move to an app-only platform, like rival startup Myntra did earlier. “We do not want to force our customers to use one specific medium to shop on Snapdeal,” Bansal has said in the past. “Snapdeal’s platform needs to be multidimensional and inclusive, rather than monolithic in nature, for the benefit of all its stakeholders. The investments, acquisitions, and partnerships are meant to digitally facilitate its buyers and sellers, as well as strengthen its logistics capabilities.”

Snapdeal has acquired seven companies this year so far. These include online product and price comparison website Smartprix, luxury fashion estore Exclusively, payments and mobile top-up startup Freecharge, digital financial product distribution platform RupeePower, logistics firm GoJavas, ecommerce site MartMobi, and Letsgomo Labs.

Five-year-old Snapdeal claims to have more than 40 million registered users and 150,000 sellers. Last year, it raised US$627 million from Japanese telecom giant Softbank.