Little ado about Snapdeal

Why read this story?

Editor's note: Snapdeal is a cautionary tale. Once a formidable No. 2 in the early years of Indian e-commerce, through a series of leadership missteps, costly acquisitions, multiple priorities, investor misalignment and hubris, is now reduced to an also-ran, searching for relevance in a thin slice of retail e-commerce that has been left by Amazon and Walmart-Flipkart. Now, six years after Snapdeal hit a peak valuation of $6.5 billion, it is approaching the public markets at a steep discount. We will not get into the how and why of Snapdeal’s fall from grace. (Read “The bittersweet relevance of Snapdeal 2.0” for more.) Instead, we’re reviewing Snapdeal’s draft IPO prospectus dated 20 December 2021, to see if there is any story that is left to sell. Value in e-commerce The most interesting part and the entire hypothesis of valuing the company is in “Section IV: About our Company - Industry Overview” of Snapdeal’s draft red herring prospectus. It is prefaced with the following remarks: The information contained in this section, unless otherwise specified, is derived from the report titled “Value Retail & eCommerce …