Snapdeal's board accepts Flipkart's up to $950 million buyout: Sources

       Snapdeal's board accepts Flipkart's up to
             $950  million buyout: Sources !!

Snapdeal has accepted Flipkart's revised takeover offer of up to $950 million, two sources said on Wednesday, providing heft to its bigger rival in a high-stakes battle with Amazon.com. 

The board of Jasper Infotech, which runs Snapdeal, approved Flipkart's bid of $900 million-$950 million last week, the sources who were familiar with the matter said. A deal is now pending the approval of Snapdeal shareholders, they said. 

Snapdeal declined to comment, while Flipkart was  .. not immediately available for comment. 

But Flipkart's leg up in this ecommerce war requires Azim Premji's blessings. According to ET Now, the merger needs Premji Invest's approval and Flipkart is yet to agree to the terms put forward by the billionaire investor. 

Premji has objected to special payments to certain shareholders including its two co-founders and two early backers, Bloomberg had said in an earlier report. 

The sticking point has been the differential payments, which are seen as an attempt to win over larger Snapdeal investors and the founders who have to agree to a vastly lowered valuation. Under the proposed terms, early investors, like Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, would receive $60 million in addition to their new equity in Flipkart, while founders, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, would get a combined $30 million. 

India's fledgling e-commerce sector is in the midst of a fierce war for supremacy between Amazon and Flipkart at a time more and more Indians shop on the web, helped by a spurt in availability of cheap phones and data plans. 

Japan's solar-to-tech conglomerate SoftBank, Snapdeal's biggest investor, is keen to consummate the deal and take an equity stake in Flipkart to profit from India's booming online retail market. 

A 2016 report from accounting firm EY noted that e-commerce has grown at a compound annual growth rate of over 50 percent in the last five years in India and the pace of growth is expected to continue, with e-commerce sales topping $35 billion by 2020. 

Bengaluru-headquarterd Flipkart had revised its initial offer for Snapdeal to up to $950 million, Reuters reported last week 

The board also considered a $700 million share-swap offer by listed e-commerce firm Infibeam but rejected it as too low, one of the sources said. 

Infibeam declined to comment. 

Separately, Indian private-sector lender Axis Bank is the frontrunner to acquire Snapdeal's digital payments unit FreeCharge for $60 million, the sources said. 

Axis Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment. All sources spoke on condition of anonymity as the discussion  are not Public.