Online marketplace Snapdeal on Tuesday said the company has acquired a majority stake in RupeePower, a Delhi-based digital financial products distribution platform. The acquisition will lead to Snapdeal launching a financial services marketplace, through which the company plans to enable disbursal of loans worth $1 billion in the next two years. The marketplace will offer financial services like personal loans, educational loans, credit cards, auto loans, home loans and extended warranties.
Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO, Snapdeal, said: “Realising the difficulties that consumers face while deciding and purchasing financial products and services and the challenges that companies face whilst reaching out to the ‘right’ audience, we have brought RupeePower into our family, to help solve the distribution challenges of the financial services ecosystem and make it more inclusive. We aspire to democratise access to credit.”
RupeePower is a digital financial distribution platform and marketplace that matches borrowers and lenders in the retail loans space for products like credit cards, personal loans, home loans, auto loans, consumer loans etc. Customers are shown the best loan and card offers for comparison and further matched with the bank’s criteria. With this acquisition, financial services companies are expected to target their products and services to a captive audience on Snapdeal and even penetrate into the tier II/III cities where Snapdeal claims to have a considerable reach.
Founded in 2011, RupeePower claims to have enabled Rs 1,500 crore of credit disbursal through its platform in the current financial year. “The share of digital origination of credit is poised to grow from today’s 7.5% to 40% over the next four years, in a Rs 400,000 crore ($67 billion) retail credit market growing at 20% annually. Our emphasis will be on scaling RupeePower into the top match-making platform between lenders and borrowers, providing consumers with the best targeted offers and a super-simplified loan process,” said Tejasvi Mohanram, founder and CEO, RupeePower.
Meanwhile, Snapdeal is also on the verge of closing the acquisition of Saas-based order management and fulfillment service provider Unicommerce eSolutions. The company was founded in 2012 by IIT Delhi graduates Ankit Pruthi, Karun Singla and Vibhu Garg. The company has so far raised at least $10 million from Tiger Global Management and Nexus Venture Partners. Snapdeal, however, declined to confirm the acquisition. Unicommerce at present counts Myntra, Snapdeal, Jabong, Groupon and HealthKart among its clients.
The SoftBank-funded online marketplace has been on a buying spree of late. It recently acquired a 20% stake in logistics firm Gojavas for Rs 120 crore and is close to announcing the acquisition of recharge platform Freecharge for about $200 million.
A Myntra spokesperson said: “We have reduced our levels of discounting across the board over the last six to nine months.”
The plan
* RupeePower is a digital financial distribution platform and marketplace that matches borrowers and lenders in the retail loans space
* The acquisition will lead to Snapdeal launching a financial services marketplace, through which it plans to enable disbursal of loans worth
$1 billion in two years
* The marketplace will offer financial services like personal loans, educational loans, credit cards, auto loans, home loans and extended warranties
* With this acquisition, financial services companies are expected to target products and services to a captive audience on Snapdeal and even penetrate into tier II/III cities where Snapdeal claims to have considerable reach