Snapdeal forays into services commerce, launches education marketplace on its portal

Delhi-based Jasper Infotech Pvt Ltd, the company behind the online marketplace Snapdeal.com, has launched an education marketplace on its portal, which enables consumers to access a wide range of test preparation material, certificate courses, classroom training and online courses.

The company has already partnered with companies including Edukart, Simplilearn, Meritnation, EasySkillz, Practice Guru and Test Funda, to provide the service. Snapdeal is now expecting to sign up a total of 150 merchants in two months to offer courses ranging from kindergarten to class XII, along with management and engineering courses.

The user needs to purchase a voucher for the preferred course or preparation material. Snapdeal will then send a username and password to the user, along with instructions to get started.

"With the launch of this category, Snapdeal is also enabling large and small organisations which have great e-learning content but currently lack the nationwide distribution which Snapdeal can offer them through its 20 million-plus users," said Rishabh Arora, AVP, Snapdeal.com.

Snapdeal was started as a pure online deals site and later it pivoted to a full-fledged horizontal e-commerce company via a marketplace model in September 2011. Recently, it had inked an exclusive partnership with Manak Waste Management Pvt Ltd that runs a used gadgets' exchange service called ReGlobe. As part of the partnership, Snapdeal introduced ReGlobe on its portal wherein consumers can sell their used mobile phones, tablets and laptops in exchange for hard cash.

The company is now close to raising between $125 million and $175 million led by existing investor eBay Inc.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)