Alibaba, a Chinese tech giant, which has made some promising investments in the Indian startup ecosystem, is temporarily, stopping all new investment activity to review its India strategy, reported by Inc42, citing sources from Livemint.
According to sources, Alibaba is disappointed with Snapdeal and Paytm Mall with their declining revenue and limited user base in the country.
The tech giant was an active large investor in some of the significant unicorns of India. The company led the funding round for Paytm and Zomato, and invested in Paytm Mall, BigBasket, and Xpressbees.
The sources said that Alibaba is not seeing any opportunity in India within its focus areas that compel the firm to Invest and it still has to get some exits, so it has decided to wait out and watch the market, instead of making risky investments.
Alibaba Group was founded by 18 people led by Jack Ma in 1999. Its businesses are comprised of core commerce, cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, and innovation initiatives.
Paytm Mall reported a net loss of ₹1,787 crore on total sales of ₹774.8 crore during 2017-18 fiscal year. The loss was nearly 150 times the loss reported in 2016-17.
With a loss of ₹186 crore for the 2018-19 fiscal year, Snapdeal, on the other side, managed to cut 71% of its ₹611 crore loss reported in 2017-18.
Furthermore, Alibaba has also launched a $100 million venture capital fund called BAce Capital for which it has also onboarded a separate team.
BAce Capital has already made its first investment of $8 million in a Bengaluru-based pregnancy and parenting platform, Healofy.
Apart form Alibaba, other big giants in the similar category include Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Priceline, Otto, Shopify sites, etc.