Snapdeal joins its rivals: Plans to disburse loans to sellers

With the peak festival close on heels, Snapdeal has also announced its plans to disburse collateral free loans worth Rs 1000 crores for its sellers to enable them to stock up for the Diwali spike.
The festive season loans would be disbursed through its on-going programme, Capital Assist, which is now managed by FreeCharge and is available to all sellers and merchants on Snapdeal, Shopo and FreeCharge.
Snapdeal is replicating two of its rivals, Shopclues and Flipkart’s strategy. Both the e-tailers last week announced similar plans to offer loans to sellers under their Capital Wings and Growth Capital initiative respectively.
Read: Ahead of festive season, Shopclues to disburse loans worth Rs 5,000 crore to sellers
“The festive season provides an opportunity to our sellers to grow their businesses many times over with the sharp increase in demand. Through Capital Assist, we have made the funding process frictionless, so that our seller partners can scale up to their full potential, without any financial constraints. We expect more than Rs. 1000 Crores disbursal to Snapdeal sellers ahead of this Diwali season, ” Senior Vice President, Market Development, Snapdeal, Vishal Chadha, said in an official statement.
Providing a platform to get direct market access and tap wider financing opportunities, Snapdeal’s Capital Assist Initiative, has been helping sellers raise funds without collateral or lengthy documentation. Snapdeal has co-evolved a scoring process with partner banks and NBFCs to provide credit rating to its sellers. This process enables instant decision on loan applications and quick disbursal.
Currently, the Capital Assist Initiative has partnered with 27 banks & Non-Banking Finance Companies (NBFCs) including State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Yes Bank, Tata Capital, Reliance Capital, and L&T Finance, Hero Fincorp, Aditya Birla Finance, Lending Kart and Capital Float among others to facilitate these loans. Till now, loans worth INR 450 crores have been disbursed to more than 2,200 small and medium-sized enterprises.