Inside Snapdeal’s $100M Electronics Sales Deal

India eCommerce player Snapdeal could realize as much as $100 million from its electronics sales offer, according to The Economic Times of India on Monday (Oct. 12).

Through aggressive discounting and promotional orders for the sale, which had previously been announced by Snapdeal, the company said that its orders grew by 10 times and its sales by 17 times over the previous year’s levels.

[bctt tweet=” Orders grew by 10 times and its sales by 17 times over the previous year’s levels.”]

Breaking down activity by category, the company said that in the large appliance category, the top sellers were air conditioners and washing machines, and within home appliances, the segment was dominated by geysers. Mobile device sales were also up four times over previous levels, as the company sold as many as five mobile devices every singe second.

The highest regions of activity were Bangalore and Delhi, the company said.

In recent Snapdeal news, with a boost to eCommerce and other digital sales, Microsoft opened up an online store on Snapdeal’s marketplace. The country itself has been primed, in the wake of several government initiatives, to spur adoption of electronic payments and eCommerce.

Snapdeal itself had been rumored to be a takeout target of Alibaba, marking the Chinese company’s initial push into Indian eCommerce (its strategy has been to expand beyond its own borders, where Chinese growth has been slowing), but earlier this year that deal had been abandoned, ostensibly over issues tied to valuation back in March.

In the wake of that deal scuttling between Alibaba and Snapdeal, Snapdeal has been busy developing its own technologies, with a focus on its Bangalore research lab, and has $100 million earmarked for its development over the next few years. That type of capital commitment seems ideally suited to a country where there are 300 million active Internet users and where there are also greenfield opportunities for the country to move beyond a cash-based transactional mindset.

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