EBay Bets Big On India, Pours Another $134M Into Online Marketplace Snapdeal

The e-commerce market in India continues to explode, fuelled by a rapid rise of online consumers and global investors keen to get a piece of the action. Today, eBay announced that it has invested $133.77 million in Snapdeal, one of the larger online marketplaces in the country. The move follows speculation of a deal in play (with one local blog pegging the figure even higher, $175 million), and follows a previous investment made by eBay in the company last year.

Prior to today, Snapdeal had raised $202 million, with the latest round in some five rounds of funding. Other big e-commerce investments in India from outside the country have included Flipkart picking up $160 million and Myntra taking $50 million.

“Accelerating growth in India and other emerging markets continues to be a core strategy for driving eBay’s global e-commerce leadership. eBay is excited about the prospects ahead for both Snapdeal and the eBay India business,” noted eBay Senior Vice President and APAC Managing Director Jay Lee in a statement. “We continue to invest in Snapdeal due to its complementary business model, good management team and strong brand.”

“We see eBay’s second round of investment in Snapdeal as an endorsement of our strategy and progress. All our current institutional investors including Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Saama Capital have participated in this round as well which is a strong endorsement of our team” said Snapdeal Co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl in a statement.

As markets like the U.S. continue to mature (and slow down in growth) EBay has long been eyeing up the opportunity of tapping into developing economies, picking up new customers that are moving into online shopping. Last year, eBay predicted that it would have 12% of its sales coming from BRIC countries by 2015, with the global e-commerce market worth some $300 billion.