Indian ecommerce player, ShopClues has been acquired by South-East Asian marketplace Qoo10 Pte Ltd in a stock deal on Thursday.

While the company did not disclose valuation, sources close to the development said the deal valued ShopClues at about $50-$70 million, far lower than the $1 billion valuations that the company commanded a few years ago.

For Qoo10, which offers services to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) via its localised online marketplaces in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong etc, the acquisition helps in its plans to expand into other Asian countries, starting with India.

The deal comes after ShopClues' failed talks for a sale with Snapdeal and Flipkart earlier this year. Snapdeal and ShopClues had also entered an exclusivity agreement but the talks fell through after due diligence, with sources citing liabilities and litigations at ShopClues as the main reasons.

Tiger Global-backed ShopClues, which just three years ago had reached the coveted unicorn status, was on its last leg and had barely enough money in the bank.

The company has been cutting costs by laying off people and cut its team size to less than half bringing it to 200 from 500 employees. Earlier, ShopClues had confirmed a 'restructuring' but did not share specific details on the layoffs and runway ahead.

ShopClues was on a cost-cutting spree for some time now, having reduced losses from Rs 210 crore in 2017-18 to less than Rs 45 crore in 2018-19, but it also consequently saw it's market share shrink to 1.6 percent in 2018, according to Forrester.

The company, founded in 2011, had raised over $250 million from Tiger Global, GIC Singapore, Nexus Venture Partners and Helion Ventures.

First Published:Oct 31, 2019 10:05 PM IST