With $14 billion allocations in India, the Softbank Group along with its Vision Fund has emerged as the largest foreign investor in India during the past decade. The Masayoshi Son-led investment heavyweight has already backed over a dozen startups in 2021 and has concluded its 15th deal.
SoftBank has picked up a significant minority stake in Snapdeal-owned Unicommerce, said two people aware of the details of the transaction.
“SoftBank is buying a 25-30% stake in Unicommerce,” said one of the persons cited above, requesting anonymity. “The terms of the deal were sealed two weeks ago and are likely to be announced soon.”
Unicommerce provides e-commerce enablement software for multichannel selling, inventory and warehouse management. In 2015, it was acquired by Snapdeal for an undisclosed sum.
SoftBank’s investment in Unicommerce comes at a time when it has doubled down on its global SaaS portfolio through Mindtickle, Whatfix, Sendcloud and SenseHQ. Unicommerce claims a leadership position in the e-commerce supply-chain SaaS space with over 20% of India’s e-commerce volumes.
Entrackr couldn’t ascertain Unicommerce’s valuation and the size of SoftBank’s investment. Queries sent to Snapdeal and SoftBank didn’t elicit any immediate responses. We will update the story as and when they respond.
SoftBank’s investment is significant for Snapdeal given the Gurugram-based company is expected to file a draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) for an initial public offering (IPO) to raise about $250 million in a few weeks from now. SoftBank is the largest shareholder in Snapdeal and will continue to be even after diluting some stake in the public market.
With e-commerce and omnichannel becoming an integral part of contemporary retail operations, the demand for Unicommerce’s solutions is likely to grow at a fast clip. The company also has operations in nine overseas countries including Asia and the MENA region.
