2 top Snapdeal execs quit amid struggle to raise funding

Snapdeal has been in talks recently with existing investor SoftBank to raise money at a valuation of $3-4 billion, according to people aware of the negotiations. That's down from the $6.5 billion that Snapdeal was valued at when it secured $200 million from Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and others in February last year.

Also, similar to Flipkart, with fresh investments not coming by, Snapdeal has been striving to reduce its cash burn.Even so, on Monday, the company said it was on path to achieving profitability over the next two years. Snapdeal had in 2015 indicated a three-year runway to profitability. In 2015-16, Snapdeal.com's loss increased to Rs 3,316 crore from a loss of Rs 1,328 crore in the year prior, while revenue grew to Rs 1,457 crore from Rs 933 crore.

The online marketplace's management has been at the centre of a churn with senior executives being moved across Snapdeal, FreeCharge and the company's logistics arm Vulcan.

In November, Vishal Chadha, who was overseeing Snapdeal's seller network, was re-designated as the head of business, categories, brand alliance and services.

Company veteran and Grabbon cofounder Tony Navin was made senior vice president of partnerships and strategic initiatives, and vice president Anubhav Goyal was given charge of the price analytics team. Snapdeal's vice president of design Harish Sivaramakrishnan quit the same month to join Google India.

Around that time, Shopo was merged with Snapdeal's payments business FreeCharge, a transition that Komaravelly helmed, according to the company. Snapdeal acquired Shopo, a platform for small sellers, in 2013 and had planned to invest Rs 665 crore in it by 2017. Instead, it chose the merger.

“The entire team of Shopo was merged with FreeCharge as they work with small merchants,“ said a company spokesman.

Source: Techgig