Inquisitive Gallivanter

Wednesday 26 July 2017

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.

RBI stops printing Rs 2000 notes, focus turns to Rs 200 notes

RBI stops printing Rs 2000 notes ??

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has reportedly stopped the printing of Rs 2000 currency notes and the new Rs 200 notes are likely to be introduced next month. Mint on Wednesday reported sources as saying that printing of Rs 2000 notes was stopped around five months ago and the government is unlikely to print more Rs 2000 notes.

Officials of the central bank reportedly told the newspaper that the RBI had also accelerated the process of printing the Rs 200 currency notes. The new notes are expected to start circulating by next month.

"About 3.7 billion Rs 2,000 notes, amounting to Rs 7.4 lakh crore, have been printed; that more than compensates for the 6.3 billion Rs 1,000 notes that were withdrawn after demonetization on 8 November 2016," Livemint said, citing an RBI source.

The RBI has reportedly already started printing the first batch of Rs 200 note in June to ensure easy currency availability in the country.

In fact a report by SBI even says that the introduction of Rs 200 note will fill in the "missing middle" even as the new currency in circulation (CIC) has already reached 84 per cent of the pre-demonetisation level.

The 19 July report from SBI’s economic research wing showed that cash on hand with banks was high at 5.4 per cent of currency in circulation, compared with 3.8 per cent before demonetisation. This shows that there is excess cash lying in ATMs or bank branches, most of which could mostly be Rs 2,000 notes, according to the report.

The SBI report noted that though there had been a significant move towards reallocating the distribution of currency towards smaller denominations after demonetisation, there was a mismatch caused by the presence of Rs 2,000 denomination straight after Rs 500.

The new notes of Rs 200 should be out before the end of 2017 and would greatly help narrow the demand-supply gap in smaller-denomination currency bills, it said.

Besides, an ATM machine typically holds 10,000 bills and if these were to comprise, say, only Rs 100 notes, the number and cost of replenishment would go up significantly.

"Herein lies the paradox. Notes of Rs 2,000 denomination in ATMs may find few takers because of the missing middle/Rs 200 note," the report said.

Last week, the Economic Times had reported that eight months after demonetisation and the introduction of new currency notes, bankers felt there was now a drop in the circulation of Rs 2,000 notes. The report had added that the supply of Rs 2,000 notes from the RBI had declined recently, leading to the speculation that there might be a deliberate plan to limit the supply of these notes.

State Bank of India Chief Operating Officer Neeraj Vyas had told ET, "We are receiving currency notes from the Reserve Bank in the denomination of Rs 500 in high-value currency”, and that the Rs 2,000 notes were only coming in as a result of recirculation.

Business Standard had earlier this month reported that RBI would issue the new Rs 200 notes to tide over the shortage of low-denomeination notes, in some parts of the country.

“It will also help in bigger transactions. You can give change for Rs 2,000 in ten Rs 200 notes rather than twenty Rs 100 notes,” said an official, adding that the notes should be in circulation by the end of 2017.