(By Vivek & Riddhi Mukherjee)
Both eBay-backed Snapdeal and Amazon India seems to have appointed people to look for potential acquisitions to strengthen its presence in the country.
Snapdeal has appointed Abhishek Kumar as its head of corporate development, reports Exchange4media. Kumar will be responsible for acquisitions, investments and partnerships that can lead to mergers for the e-commerce company.
Prior to this, Kumar was head of investments at Palaash Ventures where he deployed early stage capital in SaaS, Ad-tech, hardware and e-commerce startups. Before that, he’s also worked at TV18 broadcast leading their new ventures division. Kumar has a total 15 years of experience in this segment.
Amazon India appoints Bessemer’s Abhijeet Muzumdar to look after M&A
Last week, Amazon India had also appointed Abhijeet Muzumdar as the head of corporate development and private equity investments, reports TechCircle. He will be looking for acquisitions in Southeast Asia and India. Muzumdar told the publication that he will primarily be looking at strategy & planning and private equity-style investments in the region.
Prior to this appointment, Muzumdar was serving as the Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners. Interestingly, Muzumdar’s LinkedIn profile suggests that he led Bessemer’s investment in Amazon’s competitor Snapdeal and was a member on Snapdeal’s board until May this year.
Other investment include Bharat Matrimony, Anuntha Tech and Home First Finance Company (HFFC). Before Bessemer, Mazumdar worked at Edelweiss Capital Ltd as a senior manager and was an associate at UBS Investment Bank.
Acquisitions as growth agents
It’s worth noting that these appointments comes at a time when there is a lot going on in the e-commerce segment in India and e-commerce companies are possibly looking at potential acquisitions for inorganic growth.
Earlier this week, Flipkart had raised a massive $1 billion investment in a round co-led by existing investors Tiger Global & Naspers. The company had mentioned that it will be using the investment for acquisitions in the fashion, mobile apps, robotics and wearable segments among others, besides investing in technology and mobile platforms.
The company had also acquired the online fashion store Myntra in May this year and had stated plans of investing upward of $100 million into Myntra in the near future. Post acquisition, Myntra CEO Mukesh Bansal had joined Flipkart board and is now heading Flipkart’s fashion business. (Our entire coverage of Flipkart-Myntra deal here)
Just a day after Flipkart’s investment, Amazon had also announced that it will invest an additional $2 billion in India to support its growth and improve the customer & seller experience in the country. Amazon Seller Services India had also opened its third fulfillment center in Chennai and had stated plans to open four more fulfillment centers in Delhi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Tauru (outskirts of Gurgaon) earlier this week.
eBay-backed Snapdeal has also raised over $300 million investment until now, including a $100 million round from Temasek, BlackRock Inc., Myriad, Premji Invest and Tybourne in May this year.
