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Snapdeal co-founders prefer to go with Infibeam than Flipkart

Snapdeals’ fate seems to be uncertain as the board of online marketplace remains divided on its acquisition by Flipkart.

According to a report by Mint, Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal are pushing for a sale to Infibeam or getting Snapdeal to survive as an independent company by cutting jobs and scale of the business.

Meanwhile, Softbank with two board seats at the company is still in favour of its acquisition by Flipkart. Earlier this month, Infibeam said to have offered $1 billion to acquire Snapdeal. However, as per Mint report, Infibeam is offering $700 million to Snapdeal in all-stock deal.

Last week, Snapdeal rejected Flipkart’s offer of $800 million. Later, the Tiger Global-backed company gave revised offer of $850 million. The reason for Snapdeals’ hobnobbing with Infibeam looks like to be driven by co-founders – Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.

The duo will have some control on the company in case Infibeam bids for the beleaguered marketplace. On the other hand, if Flipkart acquires it then they have to completely exit from the company.

The proposed sale of Snapdeal to Flipkart has been stuck for over months because of disagreement amongst its investors.

The company’s early backers, Nexus Venture and Kalaari Capital along with founders were in disagreement on terms and conditions for acquisition. However, later they addressed the differences with Softbank, who has been orchestrating the deal.

Snapdeal has also been trying hard to sell Freecharge and many suitors, including Paytm, Axis Bank, Airtel, Bank of Baroda and Times Internet amongst a few others are interested in it. Meanwhile, Seattle-headquartered Amazon also said to have shown interest in Freecharge.

Amazon and Jasper Infotech signed a term sheet last week and the former is ready to buy the digital payment platform for around $70-80 million.

If a sale to either Flipkart or Infibeam doesn’t materialise, then Snapdeal expected to let go most of current work-force, reduce scale drastically and keep afloat with capital generated from sale of its payment arm.

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