Snapdeal to use $1.1 bn kitty for another acquisition

Online marketplace Snapdeal is close to announcing its seventh acquisition, its founder and chief executive officer Kunal Bahl said on Friday.

''Acquisitions are an important part of our strategy. We will soon be announcing a deal,'' Bahl said in a panel discussion at the Nasscom India Leadership Forum in Mumbai, without providing details. Asked whether the target company is a fashion portal, Bahl merely said, ''Let's see.''

Last year, Snapdeal's larger rival Flipkart acquired online fashion retailer Myntra in an estimated Rs2,000-crore deal.

Bahl said the broad philosophy behind any inorganic activity is to help those selling on Snapdeal improve their margins.

''Anything that will be an enabler for our ecosystem that will make our sellers more successful, which will make business more successful, the platform more successful ... it could be core tech, it would be any service that our sellers use, logistics may or may not be an enabler. My lens is always on how you make the ecosystem more successful," he said.

Snapdeal's last acquisition was a stake purchase in a product comparison website last month. The company has so far raised $1.1 billion from investors such as Japan's SoftBank and Ratan Tata.

Separately, Bahl said that one of his biggest challenges for the company is to keep its staff motivated. ''The challenge is to ensure that our employees find purpose in what they do every single day, without losing focus on customer centricity,'' he added.