Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Snapdeal.com, the biggest deals & discount internet company in India has closed $40M as series B investment led by Bessemer Ventures and existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and IndoUS Ventures also participated in this round. As per Kunal Bahl, Founder & CEO of Snapdeal this investment seems to be the largest Venture capital infusion in an internet company in a single round.

Interestingly Snapdeal has raised $12M in the month of January fron Nexus Venture Partners and IndoUS Ventures, thus total investment raised by Snapdeal has touched $52M. Earlier it was reported by Economic Times that Snapdeal is in talks with Bessemer Ventures and existing investors to raise 200Cr at 1000Cr Valuation.

Snapdeal claims to be adding 1.5M new users every month, their merchant base has crossed 30,000 and their deals and discount are available in over 50 cities in India. Snapdeal plans to expand its team and would like to take it upto 800 within this year.

Lets take a look at their monthly traction:

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	11M
Page views	34M
Total visits	18M
Avg time on site	3:20

Couple of months back Snapdeal introduced voucher of phone service. The new service allows users of snapdeal to avail deals bought from the website without having to carry a print out of the deal. The transaction is carried out through the SMS message that the customer gets on the registered mobile number after buying a deal. This initiative has given good results to the company catering to the 30% of its user base which access deals on their mobile.

In June 2010 Snapdeal has acquired Bangalore based deal startup Grabbon.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

BigshoeBazaar, an online wholesaler and retailer of shoes, apparels etc has closed its series B round of investment of $9M from Narayanmurthy floated Catamaran Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners. The deal was almost done after BigshoeBazaar raised its series A investment.

With this new investment Catamaran Ventures has picked up 13 per cent stake in the online firm for Rs 26 crore, Nexus Venture Partners has picked up 7 per cent stake for Rs 14 crore. The funds will be used to strengthen supply chain and setting up warehouses to support growth at the front-end,” Bigshoebazaar India Co-founder Manmohan Agarwal said.

BigshoeBazaar primarily runs a B2C portal Yebhi.com formerly known as Bigshoebazaar.com which sell footwear mainly and now it has added few more categories like Clothing, jewellery. Yebhi.com does around 4000 transactions on a daily basis. Bigshoebazaar runs a wholesale network across the country targeted at small retailers in Tier2 and Tier3 cities to source Global brands like Adidas, Nike etc. which in general don’t have access to such brands. Bigshoebazaar has also started franchisee business, where it offers shoe retailers to use it brand and retailers source the footwear from the company.

You may check out Nitin Agarwal’s interview here, Nitin is one of the Cofounder of BigShoeBazaar.

Lets look at the monthly traction at Yebhi.com:

Worldwide
Unique visitors	840K
Page views	9M
Total visits	1.2M
Avg time on site	8:50

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

BigshoeBazaar pvt ltd which runs online shoe store Yebhi.com has raised $2.2M from Nexus Venture Partners. This investment was closed in late decemeber 2010. As per Nitin Agarwal, cofounder of BigshoeBazaar talks are at advanced stage for closing another round of funding. You can checkout Nitin’s interview as part of “Walk the Talk with an Entrepreneur” here.

BigshoeBazaar primarily runs a B2C portal Yebhi.com formerly known as Bigshoebazaar.com which sell footwear mainly and now it has added few more categories like Clothing, jewelery and accessories.

Bigshoebazaar runs a wholesale network across the country targeted at small retailers in Tier2 and Tier3 cities to source Global brands like Adidas, Nike etc. which in general don’t have access to such brands.

Bigshoebazaar has also started franchisee business, where it offers shoe retailers to use it brand and retailers source the footwear from the company. Funds will be primarily used to expand the wholesale network and franchisees.

Lets Look at the monthly traction of Yebhi.com –

Personally I have been a regular user of Yebhi.com and bought multiple footwear for my family. They very prompt in servicing the clients, products are of best quality, return policy is highly user friendly.

Certainly they have strike the right mantra to crack this space. If you have used Bigshoebazaar services do share your views.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Jasper Innovative Marketing Solutions, parent company of Snapdeal has raised $12M from Nexus Ventures Partners and Indo US Ventures in series B round. Jasper aims to become mini Groupon, its expanding agressively in different countries, it has already operations in 5 countries – Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives and Singapore and plans to acquire more players in APAC region. Primarily investment would be utilized in expanding the operations in different countries.

At present Snapdeal offers dicsount coupons across 10 cities in India and about 40 cities they offer special discount coupons from e-commerce companies like tradus.in

Snapdeal has earlier acquired Bangalore based Grabbon, one of the early players in group buying space.

Lets have a look at the monthly traction of Snapdeal -

Undoubtedly Snapdeal traction looks very impressive. Snapdeal claims to have 1M users actively buying its discount coupons.

Beside Snapdeal, Jasper also runs and operates babybox.in, moneysaver prime.

Babybox.in is a parent informative portal and it aims to become a platform for hospitals, baby care brands to interact with parents. Intent is clear to form a database of parents which can be leveraged. Babybox has tie up with companies like Hushbabies which sell baby care products online.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Komli Media, Asia Pacific’s leading digital media network, has raised $15 million in funding led by Norwest Venture Partners (NVP). Existing investors, Nexus Venture Partners and Helion Venture Partners, also participated in this round but DFJ hasn’t. The additional capital will be used to fuel aggressive expansion throughout India and across its key markets in Asia Pacific. The Company will further invest in its two core businesses – the Digital Media Network and the Audience Measurement unit – which are experiencing significant growth.

This is the company’s third round of financing – the first was in January 2008, when it raised $7 million, and the second in July 2010, when it raised $6 million.

Last year, Komli Media began its expansion across Asia Pacific by acquiring PostClick, Australia’s leading site representation firm. In October the Company further expanded to international ethnic markets with its acquisition of Indoor Media. With capabilities across brand solutions and performance marketing, Komli Media is Asia Pacific’s leading digital media network.

Amar Goel, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Komli Media, said, “We were drawn to NVP because it is a global, top tier investment firm with deep domain knowledge in the online advertising sector. Furthermore, NVP’s powerful network of relationships in India and abroad will be of great value to Komli Media as we expand our offerings and services to other markets. We look forward to closely partnering with NVP to take our company to the next level.”

Komli Media’s digital media network represents more than 2,000 websites today, including sites such as Facebook, Babycenter and Bloomberg, reaching more than 45 million unique users across a number of categories and regions. The company also owns and operates ViziSense, India’s first and leading online audience and ad measurement platform. ViziSense is now being launched in Australia to tap the growing needs for cutting edge audience measurement from digital marketers and publishers.

Niren Shah, Managing Director, NVP India, joins Komli Media’s board of directors as part of today’s announcement. He commented, “NVP is excited about the potential of early and late stage Internet investments in India, and Komli is the perfect addition to our robust global Internet portfolio. Komli Media’s highly experienced management team, significant level of technical expertise, and strong operational and financial performance made our decision to invest in the company an easy one. We look forward to working with Komli Media and supporting the team as it innovates in unique ways that will cement its position as a market leader in the rapidly evolving Indian and Asia Pacific digital market.”

Prashant Mehta, Chief Operating Officer of Komli Media added, “As Komli Media expands its core operations in the fast growing Asia Pacific markets with a digital market size of more than USD 3 billion, we plan to leverage this funding to double our investment in our key products and platforms as well as scale our organization across sales and marketing.” He further added, “As we make these investments, we look forward to thought leadership and strategic guidance from the NVP team.”

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com