A

Project Report

On

The Study on emergence of Snapdeal in Internet Marketing- Origin,

Needs, Challenges and Opportunities.

Submitted At

As a partial Fulfillment for the Award of Bachelor of Business Administration

Programme BBA (class of 2015 – 2018)

Under the guidance & Supervision

Of

Prof D. Surekha Thakur

Faculty Guide & SAP Coordinator

AGBS Hyderabad

Submitted By

Name: Divyansh Jain

Enrollment Number: A30606415109

BBA: 2015 – 2018

AMITY GLOBAL BUSINESS SCHOOL,

HYDERABAD
 DECLARATION

I Divyansh Jain hereby declare that the project report entitled THE STUDY ON
EMERGENCE OF SNAPDEAL IN INTERNET MARKETING- ORIGIN, NEEDS,
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES done under the guidance of mrs. Surekha Thakur is
our original work. The interpretations in this project are drawn based on the data collected by
me.

Place: Hyderabad

Date:

DIVYANSH JAIN

Roll No. 109

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

My heartfelt sincere thanks to Dr. P. Prasad Rao Director General, Amity Global Business
School Hyderabad for giving me this opportunity for doing my project in Snapdeal.

My sincere & grateful thanks to Prof D. Surekha Thakur, Faculty guide coordinator – Summer
Assignment Project for Supervising me throughout my project.

My sincere thanks to my family members who stood by me motivating me to complete my

project successfully.

Divyansh Jain

Enrollment No. A30606415109

 AMITY GLOBAL BUSINESS SCHOOL
HYDERABAD

Certificate

This is to certify that Mr. Divyansh Jain student of Amity Global Business School 3rd Semester
class of Bachelor of Business Administration has completed the Summer Assignment Project
titled The Study On Emergence of Snapdeal In Internet Marketing under my guidance has
worked sincerely for partial fulfillment of masters of Business Administration to the best of my
knowledge and wish him for the future endeavours.

Prof. D. Surekha Thakur

AGBS Hyderabad

Date:
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

SERIAL NO. TOPIC PAGE NO.

1 Executive summary 1
2 Objectives of the study 3
3 Research Methodology 4
4 Limitations Of The Study 5
5 Literature Review 6
6 Intoduction 9
7 Company Profile 15

8 Comparative Analysis 26
9 Data Interpretation 46
10 Findings 54
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The future of snapdeal and the logistics to support it will be driven by a number of key
factors, namely ongoing and ever-increasing convergence in technologies, and the continued
drive to respond to changing consumer demand. While the demise of pure-player brick-and-
mortar is not foreseen, roundtable participants did predict a greater convergence of brick-and-
mortar and online/mobile, going beyond evolutions in click-andmortars to the emergence of
retail experiences that combine the physical and virtual aspects of shopping seamlessly. Global
social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter will increasingly act as key drivers to
snapdeal, and future growth will likely be predicated on the strong role of mobile technologies
that integrate a range of existing and new features that will lead to the ubiquity of
hyperconnected, always-on consumers. Meeting the demands of emergent consumer types will
pose several challenges to the logistics of snapdeal. One of the core issues to emerge from
discussions is consumer demand for perceived free delivery, predicted to remain prevalent.
While there is of course no such thing as free delivery – someone has to pay for it – figuring out
how to provide what consumers perceive as free delivery is a core challenge for all players along
the e-commerce value chain. Consumers will evaluate the final cost of goods purchased via e-
commerce, delivery included, and will increasingly demand a global price for any order delivery.
Another issue for the delivery chain was the issue of goods delivery tracking by consumers, or
indeed proactive tracking pushed to the consumer, which again implies costs. Consensus
emerged that consumers would accept the lack of tracking services – and relatively slow delivery
time of 7-10 days – for low-value purchases of less than say $10. Combined purchase value of
above this level would trigger consumer demand for tracking services. The opportunities
provided by cross-border are great, however again here certain friction points need to be resolved
in order to realise the full potential of cross-border e-commerce. Among these are landed costs,
returns and issues around companies‟ differential pricing across markets. The key priority
identified for the postal industry is the provision of cross border visibility and standardized
tracking events and bar-coding. Another major discussion point to emerge was around the trust
issue in the products of snapdeal. Participants felt that snapdeal is a self-regulating arena where
consumers display relatively sophisticated interactional behaviours: consumers will not engage
in business with brands they do not implicitly trust. A benefit-of-doubt factor is prevalent for
first-time experiences, however if the e-commerce experience does not fulfill consumer
expectations, the retailers and/or channel may not be afforded a second chance. A further issue
on the trust variable is that of the use of consumer details gleaned by e-commerce players for
promotional and marketing purposes. Most retailers offer consumer opt-outs, and while opting
out is generally not made as easy as it could be, it is not by consumers perceived to be a deal
breaker in the e-commerce. Millennials are far more trusting, who will spread trust to other
generations with time. However any perceived misuse of personal data will likely result in
consumers blacklisting the company, and to a receptive and wide audience thanks to social
media. Lastly there are fundamental changes taking place today in the world of e-commerce
which will affect the future of how people shop, these forces are identified as digital, social,
mobile and local.
 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

1. To study the emergence of snapdeal in internet marketing.

2. To analyze the services offered by snapdeal.

3. To study the satisfaction level of customers.

4. To study about the marketing strategy of snapdeal.

5. To study about the challenges faced by snapdeal and its competitors.

 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

“Methodology” implies more than simply the methods you intend to use to collect data. It
is often necessary to include a consideration of the concepts and theories which underlie the
methods. For instance, if you intend to highlight a specific feature of a sociological theory or
test an algorithm for some aspect of information retrieval, or test the validity of a particular
system, you have to show that you understand the underlying concepts of the methodology.

PrimaryData-

The primary data was collected by means of a survey. Questionnaires were prepared and
customers of the snapdeal were asked for an online survey and to fill up the questionnaires.
The questionnaire contains 15 questions which reflect on the type and quality of
servicesprovided by the snapdeal to the customers. The response of the customers is recorded
on a grade scale of strongly disagree, disagree, uncertain, agree and strongly agree for some
questions. The filled up information was later analyzed to obtain the required interpretation
and the findings.

SecondaryData-

In order to have a proper understanding of the e-commerce business snapdeal, a depth study
was done from the various sources such as books, a lot of data is also collected from the
official websites of the snapdeal and the articles from various engines like Google,
yahoosearch and answers.com
 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

1. The study is only for the snapdeal confined to a particular and a very small sample of
respondents . Hence the findings cannot be treated as representative of the entire snapdeal
company.

2. Respondents may give biased answers for the required data. Some of the respondents did not
like to respond.

3. Respondents may have escaped some statements by simply answering “neither agree nor
disagree” to most of the statements. This was one of the most important limitation faced, as it
was difficult to analyse and come at right conclusions.
 LITERATURE REVIEW

Jeffrey B. Ritter* Electronic commerce has become a practical reality for thousands of
businesses throughout the world. By combining the functional capabilities of computers and
telecommunication systems, companies can now exchange information electronically rather than
sending and receiving paper documents. In so doing, businesses are achieving remarkable and
unparalleled improvements in the accuracy, speed and efficiency with which commercial
transactions may be negotiated, confirmed and performed. By eliminating reliance upon paper as
the medium through which commerce occurs, new and radically different approaches are
emerging regarding how commercial relationships are defined and maintained.1 Used for
international business transactions, the technologies of electronic commerce are confronting and
overcoming traditional barriers to international trade presented by geographic, lingual and
cultural disparities between possible trading partners.

H. Etemad*Electronic commerce (e-commerce) describes the manner in which transactions take

place over electronic networks, mostly over the internet. It includes the process of supplying,
buying and selling goods, services and information electronically. This paper uses bibliometric
epistemology to suggest that a number of publications have played catalytic roles in the
formation of a knowledge network that underlies the rapidly developing field of e- commerce.
The first four of the six properties of knowledge (Latour, 1987) – the "what", "where", "when",
by "whom", "how", and "why" – are presented in the results. The paper presents the most highly
cited e-commerce documents (including books and journals), highly cited researchers, their
respective fields, topics and the publication media that disseminated their works. The formation
stages of e-commerce clearly point to the emergence of an inter-disciplinary and comprehensive
field.

Richard Germain,USA Worlds of Electronic Commerce attempts to capture the enormous

international impact of the recent explosion in information and communication technologies. It
stands alone as the first book to tackle the major economic, social, and political issues that
electronic commerce raises from interdisciplinary and international perspectives.

Including contributions from leading international scholars from geography, economics, and
public policy, it addresses theoretical and conceptual issues and presents case studies on how
retailing, job searches, banking and finance, telecommunications, and government regulation are
changing with the introduction and diffusion of the Internet and various electronic services.
References to rapid developments in these fields are drawn from the United States, United
Kingdom, Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Russia, and the developing world. The
implications of these developments on consumer behaviour, existing and new firms, regulatory
agencies, and interstate economic development are also discussed.
Karthik N.S.Iyer, Drawing upon contingency theory “fit” research in the IT and supply chain
management literature, we applied the “fit” concept to the relationship between B2B e-
commerce supply chain integration and performance. The results demonstrated that the effect of
B2B supply chain integration on financial, market, and operational performance decreased as
product turbulence and demand unpredictability jointly increased. Managerial implications
include the conditions under which IT investments yield performance improvement and the need
for firms to actively manage demand uncertainty.

Dimitrios Xanthidis (Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research
(CIBER), According to studies and surveys conducted world‐wide, government incentives and
current legal frameworks, private initiatives and investments, technology available at a
reasonable price, and public acceptance of the internet as an efficient medium for buying goods
and services are driving ecommerce growth. Academics, information technology experts and
even politicians in Greece are aware of these essential requirements as well. However, although
internet access has grown significantly and the digital foundations are there, ecommerce is yet to
reach measurable levels in Greece. This paper attempts to explain the reasons why and suggests
corrective actions by all those actively involved with Greek ecommerce.

Sandy C.Chen* Consumer trust in an Internet vendor is an issue commanding ever more
attention. Based on an extensive review of literature, this paper proposes dimensions of trust in
an Internet vendor. These are competence, integrity and benevolence. Competence refers to a
company's ability to fulfill promises made with the consumers. Integrity suggests that a company
acts in a consistent, reliable, and honest manner. Benevolence is the ability of a company to hold
consumer interests ahead of its own self-interest and indicates sincere concern for the welfare of
the customers. In a further analysis various sources where trust might reside are also identified.
Drawing on the literature in marketing and general management, the sources of trust are
classified as characteristics of the consumer, the firm, the website and the interaction between the
consumer and the firm. Given the dimensions and sources of trust, a path model for developing
consumer trust in E-commerce is suggested. This research makes a contribution to the
development of a theoretical understanding of trust in E-commerce. Although the concepts
presented in this paper can be used to carry out further empirical research, they can also be used
by practitioners to identify particular trust characteristics for realizing the potential of business to
consumer E-commerce venture.

S Feldman, We are now witnessing the earliest, experimental stage of electronic marketplace (e-
marketplace) development. Most firms are focusing on exchanges with fixed auction rules
applied to relatively simple goods and services. Many exchanges will fail due to bad timing or
inappropriate choices in business details or technical implementations, but the winners will play
a huge role in the worldwide economy as they focus decision-making and improve market
efficiencies. How will e-marketplaces evolve? They will almost certainly expand to support ever
more complicated scenarios. Even today, multi-round auctions, requests for proposals and
negotiations are the norm for expensive procurements; technological advances will permit their
use for larger numbers of smaller deals. Processes will be increasingly automated, using
sophisticated analysis techniques and large-scale computation. As participants get closer to
reaching a deal, they will reveal more information and make further decisions, and new facilities
will enable intelligent agents to participate in discovery and transactions. E-marketplaces will
also expand to support involvement by skilled specialists who need to share relevant data and to
plan and negotiate flexibly. In time, e-marketplaces will include richer collaboration and
information management facilities, and will grow to combine the capabilities usually associated
with portals and content sites with those of advanced exchanges.

Nicholas C. Romano Jr, Jerry FjermestadThe status and maturity of electronic commerce
customer relationship management (ECCRM), an emerging subfield of management information
systems (MIS), are investigated through an exhaustive literature review of 369 articles, from the
first published article in 1984 through conference papers given in 2001 and 2002. The results
indicate some trends that should be of interest and concern to researchers in this area and in MIS
as a whole. First, exploratory surveys dominate the research literature, which in itself may be
problematic. More troubling, most of the survey instruments were not validated, and the authors
did not mention validation procedures. Second, there has been little theoretical development, and
few empirical studies use hypothesis testing. Third, cumulative tradition has hardly emerged,
with each study developing a new conceptual model, new constructs, and new instruments. On
the positive side, ECCRM researchers have employed a wide range of methods and studied a
broad range of topics. The subfield of ECCRM is young, but is growing rapidly, and professional
activity in the MIS research community illustrates its importance. Specific recommendations for
further development are provided.
Chapter - I
THE STUDY ON EMERGENCE OF SNAPDEAL IN
INTERNET MARKETING- ORIGIN, NEEDS, CHALLENGES
AND OPPORTUNITIES.
AN INTRODUCTION-
Internet is changing the way consumers shop and buy goods and services, and has
rapidlyevolved into a global phenomenon. Many companies have started using the Internet with
theaim of cutting marketing costs, thereby reducing the price of their products and services
inorder to stay ahead in highly competitive markets.

Companies also use the Internet to convey communicates and disseminate information, tosell the
product, to take feedback and also to conduct satisfaction surveys with customers.Customers use
the Internet not only to buy the product online, but also to compare prices, product features
and after sale service facilities the will receive if they purchase the productfrom a particular
store. Many experts are optimistic about the prospect of online business.

In addition to the tremendous potential of the E-commerce market, the Internet provides aunique
opportunity for companies to more efficiently reach existing and potential customers.

Although most of the revenue of online transactions comes from business-to-businesscommerce,

the practitioners of business-to-consumer commerce should not lose confidence.It has been more
than a decade since business-to-consumer E-commerce first evolved.Scholars and practitioners
of electronic commerce constantly strive to gain an improvedinsight into consumer behaviour in
cyberspace.

Along with the development of E-retailing, researchers continue to explain E-

consumers behaviour from different perspectives. Many of their studies have posited new
emergentfactors or assumptions which are based on the traditional models of consumer
behaviour,and then examine their validity in the Internet context.

Snapdeal is one of the first and largest online marketplaces in India. It has recently launched
its best mobile app for IOS. In this model the Ecommerce player does not sell any goods/services
on its own but offers discount coupons which can be used by buyers to avail discount at the time
of buying or availing service from merchant.

Snapdeal is an e-commerce company based in India. It is a daily deals website that features
discount offers across lifestyle segments such as dining, health & beauty, entertainment and
travel. It also offers discounts on products like electronics, perfumes, watches, bags, sunglasses,
coaching classes, apparels and mobile phones.
Headquartered in Delhi, Snapdeal.com was launched in February 2010. The company was
founded by Kunal Bahl, a Wharton graduate and Rohit Bansal, alumnus of IIT Delhi who were
friends since school.

Snapdeal.com serves as an advertising platform for merchants and a discount platform for
customers. For the merchants who partner with Snapdeal, it is a cost- effective channel for
acquiring new customers. It also works as a risk-free alternate marketing channel. From the
merchant’s standpoint, they are passing on the customer acquisition cost in the form of a
discount offer.

 Snapdeal (SD) gets the best offer possible from the merchants from around 65 cities across
India and then deducts a small amount of commission.SD aims at showing at least 40- 90% off in
the deals from what actually one has to pay. Depending upon how good the offer is, SD deducts
their commission starting from Rs. 99 going up to Rs. 299.

 For products, SD has a particular set of commission. The most ideal amount of commission
SD charges with selling a product is 23%. More than 50-60 thousand products are available
online for customers to choose from.

 In June 2010, Snapdeal.com acquired. Bangalore-based group buying site, Grabbon.com for an
undisclosed amount. Snapdeal has been rated the #1 e-commerce site in India, in terms of
traction by Dataquest/Sapient E- commerce Survey 2011.

 Snapdeal in tricity shoots out about 4 lakh promotional text messages and about 4-5 lakh
emails, including news letters within a month. Headmasters, Tress Lounge, Manor, Lemon, J.W.
Marriot, and Rajdhani are some of the top clients for Snapdeal in the tricity with the most
repetitive orders [6].

EXCLUSIVE PARTNERSHIPS WITH LEADING BRANDS.

Over the year or so, there has been a trend of exclusive tie-ups between eTailers and established
boutiques, designers, and high-end lifestyle and fashion brands. For instance, in 2014, Jabong
added international fashion brands such as Dorothy Perkins, River Island, Blue saint and Miss
Selfridge, along with local fashion brands through Jabong Boutiques. Similarly, Myntra
benefited from exclusive tie-ups with brands such as Harvard Lifestyle, Desigual and WROGN
from Virat Kohli.

EXPANDING THE PRODUCT BASKET.

There is a recent trend of relatively newer products such as grocery, hygiene, and healthcare
products being purchased online. Similarly, lingerie and Indian jewellery has also been in great
demand among customers outside India. Export comprises 95% of cross-border eCommerce,
with the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Germany.

INDUSTRY SPEAK.
Certain eCommerce players and industry observers have raised concerns that deep discounts,
free shipping, intense competition and higher rejection rates due to cash on delivery (CoD) have
impacted online eTailing adversely. Some of these concerns are specific to India and are more
difficult to overcome than issues such as internet penetration and getting more people to shop
online. Some of the key concerns are listed below:

• Generation and sustenance of traffic: Competition from established eCommerce players is

making it difficult for private label brands to generate traffic on their white-label websites.

• High customer acquisition cost: The customer acquisition costs have been rising due to intense
competition by the relatively better off companies with more funds.

• Last-mile delivery: Poor last-mile connectivity, especially in remote areas with larger
population, is another problem faced by Indian eTailers.

• High payment cost: CoD services impose substantial financial cost. In India, unlike in
developed markets, CoD continues to be a preferred route of payment.

• Low profitability: Profitability is negatively impacted by high customer acquisition costs, free
shipping and high rejection rate of CoD orders.

• Regulatory barriers: Regulatory barriers in the Indian eCommerce market are higher as
compared to more mature markets.

• Skilled manpower: Lack of talent availability and high attrition are causing manpower crunch,
which is fast becoming a hurdle.

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT:

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is defined as the supervision of materials, information, and
finances as they move from supplier to manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer. It
involves the coordination and integration of these flows both within and among companies. The
goal of any effective supply chain management system is timely provision of goods or services
to the next link in the chain (and ultimately, the reduction of inventory within each link). There
are three main flows in SCM, namely: The product flow, which includes the movement of goods
from a supplier to a customer, as well as any customer returns or service needs; The information
flow, which involves the transmission of orders and the update of the status of delivery; and The
finances flow, which consists of credit terms, payment schedules, and consignment and title
ownership arrangements. Some SCM applications are based on open data models that support the
sharing of data both inside and outside the enterprise, called the extended enterprise, and include
key suppliers, manufacturers, and end customers of a specific company. Shared data resides in
diverse database systems, or data warehouses, at several different sites and companies. Sharing
this data "upstream" (with a company's suppliers) and "downstream" (with a company's clients)
allows SCM applications to improve the time-to-market of products and reduce costs. It also
allows all parties in the supply chain to better manage current resources and plan for future
needs.

SWOT ANALYSIS OF SNAPDEAL:

STRENGTH:
Declining broadband subscription and mobile data prices

 Increase in mobile internet penetration

 Change in urban mindset and lifestyle shift

 Evolution of the supporting ecosystem

 Growing acceptability of online payments

 Annual disposable income / household to grow 2.5 times

 Volume and value / transaction higher for credit cards

WEAKNESS:
 Low average broadband speed and flat average internet speed cause for

 concern Online payment landscape marred by low penetration ofcredit and debit cards

 Absence of clear guidelines on e-Commerce laws

 80% of online transaction are COD based effecting cash flows

t Rapid changing business models.

OPPORTUNITY:
 Innovative payment models including mobile payments

 Growth in Tier II and Tier II cities

 Selling on Social Networks

 Enhance customer experience using technological advancements and tools

 (virtual showrooms) Consumption of Analytics Services to drive business value.

THREAT:
 High failure rate of online payment transactions

 Increasing case of online frauds, phishing, thefts

 Higher cost of customer acquisition and low loyalty

 Low entry barriers leading to reduced competitive advantages

 Increase in FDI to impact local eCommerce players

 Shortage of talent and skill.

FUTURE SCOPE:
Experts predict a promising and glorious future of ecommerce in the 21st century. In the
foreseeable future ecommerce will further confirm itself a major tool of sale. Successful
ecommerce will become a notion absolutely inseparable from the web, because e-shopping is
becoming more and more popular and natural. At the same time severe rivalry in the sphere of
ecommerce services will intensify their development. Thus prevailing future trends of
ecommerce will be the growth of Internet sales and evolution. Each year number of ecommerce
deals grows enormously. Sales volumes of on-line stores are more than comparable with those of
"brick-and-mortar" ones. And the tendency will continue, because a lot of people are
"imprisoned" by work and household duties, while Internet saves a lot of time and gives
opportunity to choose goods at the best prices. Present-day Internet sales boom is the foundation
for magnificent ecommerce future. To attract more customers e-store-owners will have not only
to increase the number of available services, but to pay more attention to such elements
likeattractive design, user-friendliness, appealing goods presentation, they will have to
opportunely employ modern technologies for their businesses to become parts of ecommerce
future.

Chapter - II
 SNAPDEAL- A DETAILED PROFILE

Snapdeal is an online marketplace for mobiles, clothes, consumer electronics and other
accessories. Snapdeal was founded in 2007. Snapdeal's Headquarters are located at 238, 1st
Floor, Phase III, Okhla Industrial Estate, New Delhi, , IN 110020. It has raised $1.7B in 10
rounds. The latest round was in 2016. Some of Snapdeal's investors include Ontario Teachers’
Pension Plan, Alibaba Group and Foxconn. Some of Snapdeal's latest acquisitions include
Insightful Labs Inc., Reduce Data, Inc. and Martmobi Technologies, Inc..
Snapdeal's Co-Founder & CEO, Kunal Bahl, currently has an approval rating of 80%. 50% of the
Owler community believes Snapdeal will get acquired. Snapdeal has an estimated 5,601
employees and an estimated annual revenue of $856.7M. Snapdeal's primary competitors are
Myntra, ShopClues and Yepme.
Snapdeal appears in these lists : New Delhi companies, Retail companies, Retail Distributors
companies, Shopping companies, Online Shopping companies.

HISTORY
Snapdeal was started on 4 February 2010 as a daily deals platform, but expanded in September
2011 to become an online marketplace.[6] Snapdeal has grown to become one of the largest
online marketplace in India[7] offering an assortment of 10 million products across diverse
categories from over 100,000 sellers, shipping to more than 5,000[8] towns and cities in India. In
March 2015, Snapdeal brought actor Aamir Khan for the promotion of its website in India.

THE MAKING OF SNAPDEAL:

Snapdeal is an online marketplace, based in New Delhi, India. The company was started by
Kunal Bahl, a Wharton graduate as part of the dual degree M&T Engineering and Business
program at Penn, and Rohit Bansal, an alumnus of IIT Delhi in February 2010. Snapdeal
currently has 275,000 sellers, over 30 million products and a reach of 6,000 towns and cities
across the country[3]Investors in the company include SoftBank Corp, Ru-Net Holdings,
Tybourne Capital, PremjiInvest, Alibaba, Temasek Holdings,Bessemer Venture Partners,
IndoUS Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Saama Capital, Foxconn Technology Group,
Blackrock, eBay, Nexus Ventures, Intel Capital, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Singapore-
based investment entity Brother Fortune Apparel and Ratan Tata.[4] When Snapdeal
acquired FreeCharge[5] in an equity deal, investors Sequoia Capital India, Valiant Capital, Sofina,
Ru-Net Holdings, and Tybourne Capital also became shareholders in Snapdeal.

DELHI: At first, Kunal Bahl and his high school buddy Rohit Bansal had modest ambitions for
their online shopping site, that is www.Snapdeal. Com. Their previous venture - a physical
coupon booklet into which they had sunk their combined savings - flopped in just months. And
online retail was still a largely unproven endeavor in 2010, particularly in India, a country where
most people don't have bank accounts, let alone credit cards to make purchases on the Internet.
When an angel investor offered $200,000 as seed money, they only took half and aimed for just
100 transactions a day. Snapdeal is now on track to handle more than $1 billion in sales this year
for over 30,000 merchants across more than 500 categories of goods and services. "We sell a sari
every 12 seconds," said Bahl and that’s tremendous for any ecommerce company.

The rise of Indian e-commerce - which has only started to gain traction in recent years - has
captured the attention of international investors. This year, Snapdeal has raised $233 million,
with about half coming from the US Internet company eBay. Bahl said Snapdeal is eyeing an
initial public offering within the next year or two and soon will raise the investment.

At least half a dozen other leading Indian shopping sites have announced major fundraising deals
over the past few months. On Tuesday, Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce firm, said that it had
raised $1 billion from investors, including US firms like Tiger Global and Accel Partners. The
amount represents the largest ever for an Indian Internet company, and globally, it matches
Facebook's fundraising round in February 2011 and ranks only second to Uber's $1.2 billion
bonanza this June, according to Thomson Reuters. "E-commerce in India is poised to take
advantage of larger shifts in society," said Vani Kola, now the managing director of Kalaari
Capital and formerly of NEA-IndoUS Ventures, Indian-based venture capital firms that both
have invested in Snapdeal. "The whole industry has begun swiftly growing and developing.

The investment surge reflects the changing landscape in India. Internet access has rapidly
expanded, mostly through mobile devices, and Indians are now increasingly shifting daily
activity online, like reading the newspaper, doing bank transactions and buying goods and
services, from shoes to refrigerators (with installation included).

Billboards, text messages and emails bombard people every day with news of deep online-only
discounts and special offers. E-commerce is currently growing at a compound annual rate of 34
per cent, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, an industry trade group.

But online shopping remains a largely untapped market. While estimates of the total worth of
India's online retail industry vary greatly, most analysts figure that it accounts for less than 1 per
cent of the country's retail, according to iResearch Consulting, which specializes in China's
Internet industry. The country's largest online retailer, Alibaba, is expected to go public in the
coming months with an estimated value of more than $200 billion. "There's tremendous
headroom still," said Bahl. "I think 20 years from now, 20 per cent of retail will be online."

Yet particularities to India's shopping culture have impeded the industry's growth. By and large,
India remains a bastion of the "kirana," or neighborhood general store, as well as the roving
hawker, whose nasal cries carry the names of their wares through narrow lanes and up to the top
floors of apartment buildings. Most people tend to shop from sellers they know personally and
live near, running grains of rice through their fingers and smelling the different varieties to
determine their quality before, perhaps, moving to the next shop where they might closely
inspect the stitch count of a new batch of shirts sold by the local ready-made clothes.

These entrenched habits, combined with the newness of the Internet and credit cards, have led to
a trust gap between online retailers and their customers. To bridge it, the biggest names in e-
commerce, including Snapdeal and Flipkart, allow customers to pay cash upon delivery for their
purchases and let consumers return items at the very last second, even when the delivery person
arrives at their door .

To address the widespread perception that the state's postal service is unreliable, e-commerce
players like Snapdeal, Flipkart and Jabong have developed their own delivery logistics
companies. Snapdeal and others have built fulfillment centers and hired delivery workers to help
ensure packages arrive in a timely fashion. The logistic network, in part, has helped Snapdeal
court small business owners to its marketplace.

"In the early days," said Bahl, "we were calling every family and friend who we knew was
running a small business or wanting to start one, and for whom nationwide distribution would be
a godsend. It was quite hard to convince them, given many of them hadn't ever used the Internet
themselves."

Momentum is now on the industry's side. Bahl said that the company barely needs to recruit
merchants any more, with 80 per cent requesting to join Snapdeal. "Virality amongst small
business owners is very acute," said Bahl. "If one sees success, then word spreads really, really
fast."

Once merchants join the site, Snapdeal works with them to develop their listings and bolster
sales. When Rakesh Sareen, 29, started selling his line of traditional women's clothing made of
locally sourced materials, Snapdeal, as part of its services, promoted the launch and covered the
cost of a photo shoot and online catalog. "They send out targeted newsletters, which promote our
products, and their fashion category manager advises us on trends as well as updates on how
certain products of mine are selling," said Sareen, who had just returned from a trip to the
villages where he buys woven fabric.
Looming large over the industry is last year's entrance in India of Amazon. Huge American
online retailers like Amazon and eBay own marketplace platforms here, which, like Snapdeal
and Flipkart, connect merchants with consumers. But the country's regulations prevent Amazon
and other overseas players from selling directly to consumers from their own inventory as they
do elsewhere. Currently, foreign investment in multibrand retail is limited to 51 per cent.

There are hints that the system may be changing, at least in the online space.

The current government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, is perceived as backing small
business owners who fear that opening retail to foreign behemoths will put them out of business.
But Narendra Modi, India's new prime minister, recently urged the industry to embrace change at
a widely televised rally during his election campaign. "There is no need to fear global
challenges," said Modi, adding, "this is the age of online marketing, so accept modern science
and make use of it." Amazon in particular stands to benefit from any change to the existing rules.
"Customer loyalty isn't so strong yet, so it's conceivable that Amazon would either look to buy
big names here, or their expansion might just kill some of the smaller horizontals altogether,"
said Nikhil Pahwa, the founder and editor of Medianama.com, which analyzes India's digital
economy. On Monday, Amazon announced that it would open five new fulfillment centers
across India to bring its nationwide total to seven. In a recent email, a spokeswoman for Amazon
in India affirmed that the company is in "continual dialogue" with the government and that it
strongly supports "opening up this sector" to foreign direct investment.

Bahl of Snapdeal seems unfazed. "It wouldn't affect our marketplace," he said.

Within the next year, he thinks Snapdeal's network of sellers will reach 100,000, and the
company plans to double their number of fulfillment centers as well as engineering employees.
As for the prospect of competition from Amazon, he thinks that small businesses will congregate
on marketplace platforms like Snapdeal's so as to collaboratively compete against the giants.

"We're the ones who are going to help small businesses compete against Amazon," said Bahl.
"We are that platform."

Cricket stats record the fastest hundred, fastest fifty and every time the record is broken, it is
prominently recorded. But the fastest growing companies have no record-keeping body or an
award-giving organization to show that they have grown faster than others. Media keeps talking
about them when they make news but it’s more like flirting rather than a solid relationship. So
the company hogs limelight for sometime and gets to business as usual. Scripting success is not
easy and growing at a faster pace is even more difficult. Kunal Bahl shares his interesting
journey of founding Snapdeal and growing it really fast. Snapdeal is a company, just two-and-
half years old. Seeing its traction today, it’s difficult to believe so. “The hidden star behind
Snapdeal’s success is Vani Kola, MD of IndoUS Venture Partners,” says Kunal. When asked
Vani what she thought, she says modestly, “This speaks volumes about Kunal and Rohit, and not
about me at all. They are smart and driven, as most entrepreneurs are. They have additional great
leadership qualities, as you can see they are modest and humble, they attribute their success to
me, their team and others, who were only enablers. They take responsibility for creating success,
but shy away from hogging the limelight.”

Kunal Bahl decided to start a business with his school friend Rohit Bansal after a stint at
Microsoft; Rohit was with CapitalOne. And they launched an offline couponing business in
2007-08 as the internet was still in its infancy in India. The business was doing well and to seek
investments, Kunal started cold calling investors through their websites, as he wasn’t sure who
would be interested in investing in his kind of a business. On meeting Vani Kola, he says, “It
was a cold call. And in a couple of hours, Vani called us and we set up a meeting.” Elaborating
further, he recalls: “That first meeting didn’t go off too well, and it ended with Vani saying, ‘why
are you guys doing 5 things if any one idea can end from IndoUS or Vani ever again. But they
got back to us the next day, saying ‘We liked meeting you, and we’d like to know a little bit
more.’” The subsequent meetings were fruitful and IndoUS Venture Partners invested in Kunal’s
business. He happily states, “They had invested in September 2009, and about 4 months after
that we launched Snapdeal and from thereon it’s been a fun journey.”

FOUNDERS OF SNAPDEAL:
Kunal Bahl is an Indian entrepreneur, co founder and CEO of the e-commerce
platform Snapdeal. Kunal was born in India and had completed his initial school education
at Delhi Public School (DPS) New Delhi. Kunal then graduated from the Jerome Fisher Program
in Management and Technology at the University of Pennsylvania, earning bachelor's degrees
fromThe Wharton School and the School of Engineering and Applied Science and finished an
executive marketing program from Kellogg School of Management. While studying in
the US Kunal started a detergent company and worked to sell his product at Walmartstores.
Kunal had worked with Microsoft for a short period as he was deported from USA to India due
to some visa issue in 2008.

Rohit Bansal is an Indian entrepreneur, cofounder and COO of e-commerce platform Snapdeal.
Rohit born in Malout, Punjab India.[4] He completed his school education at Delhi Public
School (DPS) New Delhi and got his bachelor's degree in engineering from Indian Institute of
Technology New Delhi.[5]
COMPANY PROFILE

In February 2010, Kunal Bahl along with Rohit Bansal, started Snapdeal.com - India's largest
online marketplace, with the widest assortment of 12 million+ products across 500+ diverse
categories from thousands of regional, national, and international brands and retailers.

With millions of users and 150,000 sellers, Snapdeal is the shopping destination for internet
users across the country, delivering to 5000+ cities and towns in India.

With its acquisition of Freecharge in 2015, a leading mobile transactions platform, Snapdeal
has become the largest mCommerce company in the country.

In its journey till now, Snapdeal has partnered with several global marquee investors and
individuals such as SoftBank, BlackRock, Temasek, eBay Inc., Premji Invest, Intel Capital,
Bessemer Venture Partners, Mr. Ratan Tata, and many such business tycoons.

Funding history

DATE DEAL SIZE INVESTORS

February
15th, $200,000,000 Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan
2016

January
Bessemer Venture Partners, Indous Venture
15th, $40,000,000
Partners, Nexus Venture Partners
2016

August
$500,000,000 Alibaba, Foxconn, Softbank
3rd, 2015

May 21st,$100,000,000 Blackrock Inc, Temasek Holdings Ltd

2014

February Bessemer Venture Partners, Ebay Inc, Intel

27th, $133,800,000 Capital, Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture
2014 Partners, Saama Capital

August
13th, $75,000,000 Softbank
2013

April 1st, Bessemer Venture Partners, Ebay Inc, Indous

$50,000,000
2013 Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners

Acquisitions

 In 2 June 2011, Snapdeal acquired Bengaluru-based group buying site, Grabbon.com.

 In April 2012, Snapdeal acquired esportsbuy.com, an online sports goods retailer based out
of Delhi.
 In May 2013, Snapdeal acquired Shopo.in, an online marketplace for Indian handicraft
products.
 In April 2014, Snapdeal acquired fashion products discovery site, Doozton.com.
 In December 2014, Snapdeal acquired gifting recommendation site, Wishpicker.com.
 In January 2015, Snapdeal acquired a stake in product comparison website Smartprix.com.
 In February 2015, Snapdeal acquired luxury fashion products discovery site, Exclusively.in.
 In March 2015, Snapdeal acquired 20% stake in logistics service company Gojavas.com.It
currently owns a 50% stake in GoJavas valued at $35 million.
 In March 2015, Snapdeal acquired ecommerce management software and fulfillment
solution provider, Unicommerce.com
 In March 2015, Snapdeal entered into the financial services marketplace by acquiring a
majority stake of RupeePower which provides a digital platform for financial products to
customers. Tejasvi Mohanram, the founder of RupeePower, would continue to be the MD &
CEO of the company.

 In April 2015, Snapdeal acquired mobile-payments company FreeCharge.com.

 In September 2015, Snapdeal acquired Reduce Data, a programmatic display advertising
platform.
Business Results
In the year 2012-13, Snapdeal had said that it expected revenues of about ₹600
crore (US$89 million). Betting big on the growth of mobile commerce, Kunal Bahl, the CEO,
said at the time that 15-20 per cent of the sales on Snapdeal came through m-commerce.
Snapdeal.com expected the total sale of products traded on its platform to cross₹2,000
crore (US$300 million) in the fiscal year 2013-14 helped by its robust growth in the past two
years and the growing popularity of e-commerce in India. In June 2014, Snapdeal announced that
it had achieved the milestone of 1000 sellers on its platform getting sales of over Rs 1 crore.

Labour Issues
Snapdeal employees approached the Labour Department in February 2016, claiming that the
company was firing them and had forced 600 employees to resign in the last one year.
After protests from Snapdeal employees, Delhi Government ordered the Labour Department to
probe the allegations.

Awards and recognition[

 eRetailer of the Year & Best Advertising campaign of the year - Indian eRetail awards 2012
organized by Franchise India in Feb,2012.
 Winner of Red Herring Asia Awards 2011.
 E-commerce site of the year at WAT awards that took place in Jan 2012, Mumbai.
 Voted amongst the Buziest brands of India in afaqs's annual buzz-making poll.

Controversy

 Snapdeal faces flak for Aamir Khan's statement

Snapdeal faces controversy over buying fake tweets


 Snapdeal does it again: Man orders mobile phones, gets stones in package

 Snapdeal Raises $200M in Funding at a Valuation of Over $6.5B
Trivia

 In June 2011, Shiv Nagar, a village located in Muzaffarnagar district in Uttar Pradesh, India,
became Snapdeal.com Nagar (nagar meaning town in Hindi), after Snapdeal had installed 15
hand pumps for drinking water. The villagers voted to name their hamlet after Snapdeal to
express their gratitude.

Business Results

 As of now, Snapdeal has over 150,000 sellers, shipping to 5,000+ towns and cities in
India, offering more than 6,000 brands across 500 categories. It has 25 million of
user base and adds a new product every 20 seconds. One out of every eight internet
users in India is subscribed on Snapdeal, and the company is growing at the rate of 2
million new subscribers per month.

 Technology is the single biggest expense in the company. Every line of code in
Snapdeal is written in-house as they don’t outsource anything and don’t use other
platforms. The company is tapping customers in non-metros and tier-II and tier-III
cities; 60 percent of its sales come from these areas, and Snapdeal is hoping to widen
its reach.
Awards:

• E-Retailer of the Year & Best Advertising campaign of the year – Indian E-Retail awards 2012
organized by Franchise India in Feb2012.

• Winner of Red Herring Asia Awards 2011.

• E-commerce site of the year at WAT awards that took place in Jan 2012, Mumbai.

• Voted amongst the Buzziest brands of India in Afaqs’s annual buzz-making poll.
CHAPTER– III
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SNAPDEAL WITH
COMPETITORS COMPANY.

Snapdeal, founded by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, is an online shopping marketplace started
in February 2010 as a daily deals platform inspired by groupon.com but expanded in September
2011 to become an online marketplace. It started as a member only website which gradually kept
gon growing to become the largest online marketplace in India offering an assortment of 12
million+ products across diverse categories from over 150,000 sellers catering to a user base of
25 million members.Snapdeal is now the second-largest e-tailing company after Flipkart in India.

Success Story:

In 2010, when Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal wanted to start their own business, they chose an
offline couponing business and named it MoneySaver. In three months only, 15000 coupons
were sold and it was time to carry the business to the next level.

They met investor Vani Kola but the first meeting did not worked well and after another round of
discussion, Vani Kola’s venture capital firm decided to invest in Snapdeal. And it was the time
for Snapdeal to take the journey to next stage. Initially started as an offline business, Snapdeal
went online in 2010. It was a jerky ride in the first few months. Mistakes were made, but lessons
were learnt too.

However, the biggest decision of the founders came in November 2011when inspired by the
success of Alibaba.com, Rohit and Kunal wanted to create something on similar lines. The
Couponic and deals business was shut down and an online marketplace was opened instead.

It was a make or break decision. Snapdeal had a huge market share in the deals business at that
time and starting something new was very risky and this move surprised the investors too. At
that point of time, eBay was the only marketplace in India.

The actual fact that Snapdeal is valued at a billion dollars today is a proofto the vision of its
founders. Currently, more than 150,000 sellers sell around 12 million products on Snapdeal. The
company’s phenomenal growth in a short span has been a remarkable journey. The company
began to concentrate on building scale and improving speed. When eBay invested in Snapdeal,
they brought immense experience onto the table.

In just two years, the company went from scrapping their group coupon business and starting an
online marketplace to become a billion dollar company. Its year on year growth is almost
600%.The average age of the workforce at Snapdeal is 25. Their values – Innovation, Change,
Openness, Honesty and Ownership drive them to press for greater success. The company’s
growth had been phenomenal but it is their continued effort to bring the best to the market and
their zeal to succeed as the best B2C marketplace is what sets them apart. Great ideas might be
important for a business, but it is the confident implementation of those ideas and the right effort
which are more important. It is action and not mere thought that gives results.

Working Model:

A marketplace model like Snapdeal needs to ensure that technology integrations work seamlessly
and this is what Bahl is trying to achieve constantly. The powerful model of local merchant &
physical product e-commerce is something which is very unique to Snapdeal.com, and it gives
the opportunity to provide wider variety of choice to the customers. Snapdeal is thus a very
conservative company in making investments. Company culture is more about how to do more
with less.

Mobile Thrust:

Of a total of 210 million Internet users in India, 155 million users access the web through mobile
devices. Like most e-tailing companies, Snapdeal has also its own mobile app. Indeed, few
months ago, when mobile visitors to the site were just five percent of the total, Bahl and Bansal
created a separate team for mobiles and urged it to compete with the PC team. This strategy
worked in favor of the company and soon the mobile traffic climbed and the result can be seen in
terms of orders coming from mobile. Now between 70 and 80 per cent of the orders come over
the mobile. It is predictable that the figure will rise to 85 to 90 percent in the coming two years.
“On mobile, the conversion is over five per cent, and that is 20 per cent higher than over PCs. It
makes a lot of difference,” says Bansal.
Marketing Strategy:

When launched, Snapdeal was first of its kind. When it was establishing its niche in the industry,
websites like mydala.com and DealsandYou came as its core competitor.

But working and focusing primarily on its goal, within 2 years, Snapdeal succeeded in making 8-
9 million user base. They entered in top 100 Indian websites in terms of traffic.

To further increase their members and traffic, they started referral programs on their websites in
which a user was paid a fixed amount for successful sign up of a friend after receiving the
referral link to use Snapdeal. Other than this, they started “Get your first deal free” offer which
got huge response from the user side. This led to the strong brand value of Snapdeal. Side by side
to these strategies, affiliate marketing campaign was also working. This campaign was launched
after 8-9 months of its inception. They started cost per lead (CPL) campaign in which the
affiliates were paid Rs. 30 for each lead generated. But the problem was that the margin was very
less related to cost per acquisition that was very high and the average revenue generated on each
transaction was approx. Rs. 50-100.

But Snapdeal knew how to remain in the market and for this they kept on promoting themself in
any situation. After leads were generated, an aggressive email marketing campaign was launched
to reach out those leads. Every day on regular basis, promotional emails were sent to the
registered users.

But it was not the end. The names like Myntra and Flipkart were entering the market at the same
time. So to survive in the market, Snapdeal started to add more products listing into their
website. Soon Snapdeal ventured into a proper e-commerce site including categories like
electronics, fashion, kitchen appliances, apparels and many more. Finally in September 2011,
Snapdeal turned into a marketplace.

Advertisements:

Flipkart launched its “Big Billion Day” offer in October 2014, and Snapdeal left no room for
others to take its advantage. It introduced its own advertisement along with Flipkart showcasing
users the advantage to shop with them.

Again when Flipkart launched its new advertisement in June 2015, then also Snapdeal nailed it
and created its own ad along with.
Other than that, Snapdeal launched various television advertisements for promotion and bring
organic traffic to their portal.

For promotional activity, Snapdeal used the face of many well-known Bollywood celebrities
including Aamir Khan, Pulkit Samrat, Alok Nath and Krishna Abhishek.

Flipkart vs Snapdeal:

Competition is the most common problem in a business enterprise. There is a competition in

the local, national and international markets like this there is a great competition in E-commerce
also. The competition is the major thing which promote the business enterprise to Advertise
more and give more discounts. In E-commerce market there is a great competition between
Flipkart and snapdeal in Indian online bazar. Competition means how you express your products
in market.
Flipkart and Snapdeal have raced to the top of the Indian ecommerce heap quickly. But the two
companies have followed different routes to reach the position they are in today.

Economic Times does a comparison of the business models of India's top two online
marketplaces and finds Flipkart to be an SRK-like consistent performer & Snapdeal oozing
Salman-like confidence.

Interpretation: Though snapdeal achieved greater markets, flipkart still had the upper hand and
was growing simultaneously.
With the mixed response on social media platforms to Flipkart's Big Billion Day sale and
Snapdeal's sale on October 6, a Mumbai-based social media and research agency has published a
brief analytics report.

The TeamPumpkin report, titled "#Flipkart vs #Snapdeal; The Social Media Angle", is about the
much-hyped sales that created records for the Indian e-commerce industry.

According to the report, Snapdeal, which had created a buzz by hosting a quiz ahead of the sale
on October 6, got great traction during the morning across social media platforms, but Flipkart
still kept leading throughout the day. It adds that the Flipkart mentions on social media were
much more than the Snapdeal in the evening time.

The report also noted Flipkart was over the course of the day subjected to a larger backlash, with
roughly 21 percent negative mentions, roughly 55 percent neutral mentions, and roughly 25
percent positive mentions. Although Snapdeal had lower mentions overall, it had a higher
percentage of positive mentions, at roughly 31 percent. It had roughly 9 percent negative
mentions, and 60 percent neutral mentions.

Both Flipkart and Snapdeal had taken out advertisements on a large scale to publicise their
campaigns. Snapdeal even took a dig at Flipkart's 1-day Big Billion Day scheme with its tagline,
"For others it's a big day. For us, today is no different".

In terms of gender engagement, males dominated. Snapdeal had a higher female to male gender
ratio compared to Flipkart. It had about 21.9 percent female engagement to Flipkart's 18.5
percent.

After the sale, when Flipkart claimed it sold products worth $100 million (over Rs. 600 crore)
within 10 hours, Snapdeal said that its sales were worth Rs. 1 crore a minute in 10 hours - which
translates into a figure similar to Flipkart's.

Snapdeal claimed that it sold 10 products per second across categories between October 3 and
October 5 but did not disclose the total sales value. The company said it sold a smartphone every
6 seconds, a laptop every 20 seconds, a tablet every 30 seconds, a saree every 30 seconds, a pair
of footwear every 10 seconds, etc.

Amazon vs Snapdeal vs Flipkart:

In the 90s we saw the dot com boom; do we perceive the e-commerce sector growth in India
with the same hype? Well, it’s booming for sure but what happens next is yet to be seen. The
intense competition in this space, especially among the top 3 players is good for the consumers.
Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, all of them have raised investments or have commitments of $1
Billion or more. All 3 work on a marketplace model but have some areas where they excel or
differ from one another as to be able to grow rapidly in a short span of time is the real aim.
Flipkart follows an invite-only model to sign on sellers which is more time-consuming. Note that
Amazon doesn't sell, but it is a glorified marketplace, for now; competing with Ebay in that
space; whilst Flipkart has also launched a similar service. Not to forget other promising entities
like Yebhi, Quickr which are also making a shout-in in other categories. In the classifieds sector
the Indian based Quickr is facing stiff competition from the OLX.
Meanwhile, revenue figures from Registrar of Companies (RoC) do show Flipkart remains in
lead. Flipkart didn't have much competition in 2007 when it started. Its founders initially thought
of a price comparison website - an aggregator of e-commerce sites. But they soon realised there
were hardly any e-commerce sites in India. So they founded Flipkart and it quickly pulled away
from older e-tailers such as Indiaplaza by innovating and offering many firsts - 24/7 customer
support, cash on delivery, as well as a return policy.
But those innovations are now commoditised. Every big player offers the same. All three also
advertise aggressively on television and print to build their brand recall; they are battling to be
the first to announce category launches, new services, and funding; competing for global talent
while taking potshots at each other on social media.
All three are marketplaces and sellers on their platforms don't necessarily agree to price cuts the
companies want; the trio indulge in 'gap funding'. They make up the difference by paying sellers
and charging the cost to promotional expenses. While companies remain tightlipped, it is widely
believed that Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon burn more than $100 million of cash every month.
Flipkart has the highest cash burn rate but then it also raised the largest amount - some $2.3
billion so far. Snapdeal has raised close to $1 billion in 2014, while Amazon India is backed by a
parent which has pledged $2 billion investment in the Indian marketplace. All will probably need
even more money. To win market share, all three discount constantly and add to their already
humungous losses. Flipkart, in 2013/14, ran losses of Rs 400 crore whereas Snapdeal lost Rs 265
crore, and Amazon Rs 321 crore. Some estimates say Flipkart and Snapdeal have roughly
enough cash to last out a year and a half at current burn rates. And this war is unlikely to be
settled within that time period.
While all three appear largely similar to the average customers, there are subtle differences in
offerings and business philosophies. "People don't go to Amazon for a crazy sale. But they do to
Flipkart and Snapdeal. Amazon's philosophy is to offer a better product at everyday low price.
But Flipkart and Snapdeal are seen as deep discounting sites," says Mahesh Murthy, Managing
Partner at Seedfund, an early-stage venture capital company.
When and who will come out as the outright winner and why? Compare the data
below.

Source:Trak.in

Initially, before Amazon entered the Indian market, the industry had several players Flipkart,
Myntra, Snapdeal, Let's Buy, India Times Shopping, Fashion and You and others. With huge
funding coming from foreign investors like Softbank to huge VCs betting on them, the big fish,
the piranhas started consolidating and eating up (acquiring) smaller players like Let's Buy, Urban
Touch etc.

Present scenario in Amazon vs Flipkart vs Snapdeal:

Market share of these sharks has increased considerably. The three major Players are Flipkart,
Amazon and Snapdeal. We can’t envisage any new player emerging from the mirage.

The sharks have now become bigger for the ocean as Flipkart acquired Myntra. Money is being
poured in at an alarming rate. As Flipkart announced a $1 billion financing, Amazon decided to
steal Filpkart's thunder by announcing that it would invest $2 billion in its Indian entity. Tapping
the maximum possible market is the key & obviously demographics are a factor.

The final Scenario Only 2 major players left. Flipkart and Amazon have to survive this. Snapdeal
has an outside shot. Flipkart will go for an IPO in either US or Singapore (* Flipkart files to
become a public company). E-commerce will eventually drive towards profitability though, the
smaller sharks will be eaten up by the bigger ones, either via acquisitions - or we'd see plenty of
mid-size sharks forming alliances.
The online commerce market in India has a very low penetration. We haven't even begun to
scorch the surface here in terms of potential. India does something around $3 billion a year in
Commerce; whilst China does something around $100+ billion major due to the Jack Ma led
Alibaba which recently got listed on NYSE (*Alibaba valuation analysis).

As of today, the biggest player in this market is Flipkart, followed by the rest. Amazon has
covered a good percentage of market in a short time, but the race has just started & Flipkart’s
already some paces ahead, for now. Flipkart's investors knew that the real e-commerce battle in
India was not Flipkart versus Infibeam or Snapdeal. They knew even before the launch of
Amazon.in that the real contender was Amazon.
Amazon India’s sales are estimated at over $200 million (Rs 1,200 crore). It took flipkart 7 years
to achieve the sales numbers, snapdeal expects to reach it this year while amazon might clock Rs
6,000 crore by the end of March 2016.

See the graph below to understand how much loss each player incurs for every rupee in net
revenues.
Flipkart leads the race here to losing 2.23 rupees for every 1 rupee of revenue. Amazon loses
1.90 and Snapdeal has least amount of losses at Rs. 1.72.

Other Competitors:
Expectedly, Flipkart topped the charts with over 62 million visits in the month of April
with Myntra coming shade lower at 59.5 million. Given that both of them have now come
together, purely based on the traffic, they clock more traffic than the rest 8 players combined

Online Shopping: Shop Online for Mobiles, Books, Watches, Shoes and More clocked a
respectable 27.6 million visits in month of April (Remember, they have not even completed a
year since launch as yet). Also, if you combine Junglee, which is owned by Amazon, their traffic
bulges to close to 40 mln visits

Interestingly, Infibeam and Tradus both have not been doing too well in terms of traffic. They
clocked 3.4 mln & 3 mln respectively. Also, according to Similarweb, their traffic has been
steadily dropping over last 6 months. Both of them had close to 5 million visits at the start of the
year!

Myntra had surprisingly low (infact lowest of all) visitor time spent at 3:04 minutes.Junglee and
Jabong were other two sites who had low visitor time spent.
Source Of Traffic:
Myntra, Tradus, Flipkart and Jabong were 4 sites that had lower search traffic and high direct
traffic, which meant that they had better brand recall than others (there can be other reasons as
well) and more people visited these sites directly.

On the other hand, HomeShop18 and Infibeam had nearly 6 out of 10 visitors coming from
search engines.

When it came to referral traffic (through affiliate partners, coupon sites, etc) Myntra rules with
42% of their traffic coming from referrals. Snapdeal, HS18 and Junglee had lower referral
traffic.

Contrary to popular belief most sites had very less paid traffic (from advertising).Junglee,
Jabong & Myntra got around 6% of traffic from display advertising. All others had between
0-2 percent.
CHAPTER– IV
 DATA INTERPRETATION AND ANALYSIS

Data Interpretation:

1. Your age?

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
18-25 25-35 35-45 Above 45

Interpretation : Survey has been done mostly between the age group of 18-25 as they’re
the frequent visitors and buyers from snapdeal.

2. Gender?
 70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
Male Female

Interpretation : The survey has been done on 60 males and 40 females.

3. How many times did you purchase from snapdeal in the last 6 months?

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
never once 2-4 times 5+ times

Interpretation : It shows that 88% of people have shopped either once or more than once
from snapdeal.
4. How many times did you purchase from any other ecommerce website in the last 6
months?

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
never once 2-4 times 5+ times

Interpretation : only 4% of people from the survey have never purchased from any
ecommerce website.
 5. Which other ecommerce websites you’ve purchased from in the last 6 months?
45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
flipkart amazon jabong alibaba

Interpretation : It shows that 30% of the people prefer flipkart, 42% prefer amazon, 19% prefer
jabong and 9% prefer alibaba.
6. Does snapdeal render proper service to the customers?
90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
YES NO

Interpretation : It shows that about 84% of the snapdeal users are happy with the service
that the company renders.

7. Which of the following company’s delivery time you think is the quickest?

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
flipkart snapdeal amazon
 Interpretation : It shows that about 40% of the people believe that flipkart has the
quickest delivery time comparatively.

8. When it comes to choosing payment method, do you prefer it to be COD or net banking?

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
COD net banking

Interpretation : It explains that 70% of the people prefer cash on delivery.

9. Do you agree the following statement “most of the online buying advices are not
objective”
 90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
Yes No

Interpretation : 80% of the people believe that online buying advices are not objective.

10. How much would you rate snapdeal ?

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
1 2 3 4
 DATA ANALYSIS
By now leading e-commerce companies like Flipkart, Myntra, Jabong and Snapdeal have access
to a huge amount of internal and external shopper data. However, at this stage in their evolution,
these companies are focused more on building the internal data. A customer's shopping history is
the main input that goes a long way in building her profile. As mentioned earlier, to build their
toplines, e-commerce companies are organising more 'sales' properties. Now, to manage high
traffic and up the conversion rates, they have to do their homework really well. For one Myntra
had begun preparations for its 'End of Reason' sale around a month in advance. Preparations
kicked-off by understanding the marketing message of the sale event. The next step involved an
in-depth analysis of the best-selling categories on its portal over last 10 days. After this, a
catalogue was prepared, listing all the items on which the company offered discounts in the range
of 20 to 70 per cent. In the final stage of preparations, the company reached out to a targeted set
of customers. With its vast product assortment, while it makes sense for Myntra to approach as
many customers as possible, the company does not look at this as a carpet-bombing exercise.
"For example, if a particular sale catalogue does not contain women's products, we do not send
mailers to them," adds Kompalli. Myntra claims that it got 20x traffic for the January 3 sale day
and because of this overwhelming response the two-day sale was wrapped up in just one day.
Despite the availability of recommendation and event-driven promotion engines, many e-
retailers find it challenging to determine the right product recommendation or promotion that
will help them close a sale. Says Puneet Gupta, chief technology officer, Brillio (a US-based
technology consultant and software developer), "With predictive analytics and the use of
machine learning, e-commerce players can now derive a clear understanding of consumer
behavioural patterns, spanning purchase history and performance of different products on the
site." Amazon's forecasting tools use historical data and also have the provision for assessing
fluctuations in demand during festivals and holidays. Says Samir Kumar, director, category
management,Amazon India, "Analytics helps us predict the traffic on the website along with the
possible conversion rate. Since our website runs on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, we
also have the flexibility to scale up in real-time." The company uses brand and SKU data along
with the number of visits to various product pages to determine if the assortment will attract
customers. This data is then shared with the listed sellers. Analytics can also be used in
predicting the amount of sales that is possible during peak sale seasons. In
general, Snapdeal doesn't set prices. But it encourages the seller to offer discounts. Sellers by
themselves neither have the data nor tool to analyse the big trends. The company has a platform
on which all the data on what is sold in various seasons, day of the month, time of the day etc is
stored. A collective data analysis of all the ongoing sales helps sellers in setting the prices of
their products. Snapdeal also provide its merchants with data points on the expected volume of
sale based on the prices set. Focus on mobile In last two years, the likes of Flipkart, Jabong and
Snapdeal have paid extra attention to pushing their app downloads. The idea is to create more
loyal customers and mine accurate data on each one of them. Says Amitabh Misra, chief
technology officer, Snapdeal, "You can collect more consumer data through apps because it can
access consumer data on mobile phones. So if a user has given the access, we can give her better
recommendations on the basis of the social information collected." This is how Snapdeal mines
its app data. First customers are profiled on the basis of mobile devices they are using. There is a
tracking SDK (software development kit) embedded in the application and as the person
navigates through the app, data is collected and sent to the server for analysis. Next, the app
interacts with the API (application programming interface) layers at the backend. At the API
layer, information on browsing data, buying history etc is collected. The information that can be
collected also depends on kind of phone being used and whether you get access to the
consumer's contact list, social data and so on. "It has more to do with connecting mobile data
with personal data and their interaction with the app," Misra adds. Snapdeal, however, is
cautious about not using any information that a user has not explicitly given permission for. The
data collected through smartphones is not stored in a personalised manner. It is more about trend
analysis than individual shopper analysis. Even as personal data is used as an input for
algorithms around offerings like 'similar products', 'also viewed' etc, the moment it passes though
the system, it is obscured. In other words, data relating to one shopper will never be shown to
another. Besides providing a better buying experience to shoppers, this capability helps Snapdeal
cut costs. - See more at: http://www.fractalanalytics.com/news/making-most-data-predictive-
analytics-helping-e-commerce-companies-improve-their-conversion#sthash.O0Pwu6mg.dpuf
CHAPTER – V
 FINDINGS
 In 2 June 2011, Snapdeal acquired Bengaluru-based group buying site, Grabbon.com.
 In April 2012, Snapdeal acquired esportsbuy.com, an online sports goods retailer based out
of Delhi.
 In May 2013, Snapdeal acquired Shopo.in, an online marketplace for Indian handicraft
products.
 In April 2014, Snapdeal acquired fashion products discovery site, Doozton.com.
 In December 2014, Snapdeal acquired gifting recommendation site, Wishpicker.com.
 In January 2015, Snapdeal acquired a stake in product comparison website Smartprix.com.
 In February 2015, Snapdeal acquired luxury fashion products discovery site, Exclusively.in.
 In March 2015, Snapdeal acquired 20% stake in logistics service company Gojavas.com.It
currently owns a 50% stake in GoJavas valued at $35 million.
 In March 2015, Snapdeal acquired ecommerce management software and fulfillment
solution provider, Unicommerce.com
 In March 2015, Snapdeal entered into the financial services marketplace by acquiring a
majority stake of RupeePower which provides a digital platform for financial products to
customers. Tejasvi Mohanram, the founder of RupeePower, would continue to be the MD &
CEO of the company.

 In April 2015, Snapdeal acquired mobile-payments company FreeCharge.com.

 In September 2015, Snapdeal acquired Reduce Data, a programmatic display advertising
platform.

LEARNINGS

Certain eCommerce players and industry observers have raised concerns that deep discounts,
free shipping, intense competition and higher rejection rates due to cash on delivery (CoD) have
impacted online eTailing adversely. Some of these concerns are specific to India and are more
difficult to overcome than issues such as internet penetration and getting more people to shop
online. Some of the key concerns are listed below:

• Generation and sustenance of traffic: Competition from established eCommerce players is

making it difficult for private label brands to generate traffic on their white-label websites.
 • High customer acquisition cost: The customer acquisition costs have been rising due to intense
competition by the relatively better off companies with more funds.

• Last-mile delivery: Poor last-mile connectivity, especially in remote areas with larger
population, is another problem faced by Indian eTailers.

• High payment cost: CoD services impose substantial financial cost. In India, unlike in
developed markets, CoD continues to be a preferred route of payment.

• Low profitability: Profitability is negatively impacted by high customer acquisition costs, free
shipping and high rejection rate of CoD orders.

• Regulatory barriers: Regulatory barriers in the Indian eCommerce market are higher as
compared to more mature markets.

• Skilled manpower: Lack of talent availability and high attrition are causing manpower crunch,
which is fast becoming a hurdle.

APPENDIX
Questionnaire:
1. How often you shop online?
More than once in a month

Once in 1-2 Months

Once in 3-6 months

Once in 7-12 months

Never

*2. Which of the following features DO you like about snapdeal?

Ease of searching the item you are looking for

Discounts

Customer Service
 Delivery Time

Cash on Delivery

Exchange Offer

Packaging

I have never shopped at Flipkart

*3. Which of the following features you do NOT like about snapdeal?
Less discount as compared to other e-commerce sites

Delayed Delivery

Packaging

Delivery charges for purchases under 300

Others

No Complaints

I have never shopped at Flipkart

*4. How do you rate your overall snapdeal Experience?

Poor

Average

Good

Very Good

Excellent

Not Applicable
*5. What are the other e-commerce sites you have shopped from?
Flipkart

Fashionandyou

eBay

Homeshop18

Infibeam

99labels

Rediffshopping

Yebhi

I don’t shop online

*6. How was your experience on these sites as compared to snapdeal?

Better

Equal

Poor

Not Applicable

*7. Which of the following are your reasons for shopping online?
Convenience

Wide Range available

Discounts

Unavailability of stores nearby

I do not shop online

Other (please specify)

*8. What are the reasons that deter you from shopping online?
You are insecure about paying online

Concerns regarding quality of product

Lag time between payment and delivery

I love shopping outdoors

I like to feel the products physically before buying

I do not shop online

*9. How did you come to know about Snapdeal?

Word of Mouth

TV

Internet

Print Media

I haven’t heard of it

*10. What do you prefer buying from Snapdeal?

Books

Electronics

Electrical Appliances

Fancy Items(Watches, Bags etc.)

Stationery

Beauty and Healthcare

 Music, Movies and Posters

I have never shopped at Snapdeal

CONCLUSION:

The future of snapdeal and the logistics to support it will be driven by a number of key factors,
namely ongoing and ever-increasing convergence in technologies, and the continued drive to
respond to changing consumer demand. While the demise of pure-player brick-and-mortar is not
foreseen, roundtable participants did predict a greater convergence of brick-and-mortar and
online/mobile, going beyond evolutions in click-andmortars to the emergence of retail
experiences that combine the physical and virtual aspects of shopping seamlessly. Global social
media platforms like Facebook and Twitter will increasingly act as key drivers to snapdeal, and
future growth will likely be predicated on the strong role of mobile technologies that integrate a
range of existing and new features that will lead to the ubiquity of hyperconnected, always-on
consumers. Meeting the demands of emergent consumer types will pose several challenges to the
logistics of snapdeal. One of the core issues to emerge from discussions is consumer demand for
perceived free delivery, predicted to remain prevalent. While there is of course no such thing as
free delivery – someone has to pay for it – figuring out how to provide what consumers perceive
as free delivery is a core challenge for all players along the e-commerce value chain. Consumers
will evaluate the final cost of goods purchased via e-commerce, delivery included, and will
increasingly demand a global price for any order delivery. Another issue for the delivery chain
was the issue of goods delivery tracking by consumers, or indeed proactive tracking pushed to
the consumer, which again implies costs. Consensus emerged that consumers would accept the
lack of tracking services – and relatively slow delivery time of 7-10 days – for low-value
purchases of less than say $10. Combined purchase value of above this level would trigger
consumer demand for tracking services. The opportunities provided by cross-border are great,
however again here certain friction points need to be resolved in order to realise the full potential
of cross-border e-commerce. Among these are landed costs, returns and issues around
companies‟ differential pricing across markets. The key priority identified for the postal industry
is the provision of cross border visibility and standardized tracking events and bar-coding.
Another major discussion point to emerge was around the trust issue in the products of snapdeal.
Participants felt that snapdeal is a self-regulating arena where consumers display relatively
sophisticated interactional behaviours: consumers will not engage in business with brands they
do not implicitly trust. A benefit-of-doubt factor is prevalent for first-time experiences, however
if the e-commerce experience does not fulfill consumer expectations, the retailers and/or channel
may not be afforded a second chance. A further issue on the trust variable is that of the use of
consumer details gleaned by e-commerce players for promotional and marketing purposes. Most
retailers offer consumer opt-outs, and while opting out is generally not made as easy as it could
be, it is not by consumers perceived to be a deal breaker in the e-commerce. Millennials are far
more trusting, who will spread trust to other generations with time. However any perceived
misuse of personal data will likely result in consumers blacklisting the company, and to a
receptive and wide audience thanks to social media. Lastly there are fundamental changes taking
place today in the world of e-commerce which will affect the future of how people shop, these
forces are identified as digital, social, mobile and local.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Google
 Wikipedia
 Snapdeal
 Snapdeal Survey
 Economic times
 Crunchbase