The founders of Unicommerce eSolutions, a SaaS-based ecommerce solutions provider, which was acquired by Snapdeal, have quit the company. They have said that the decision to quit was part of an agreement between them and Snapdeal at time of acquisition deal.
Ankit Pruthi, co-founder and former chief executive of Unicommerce, said,
As part of the sale transaction in April 2015, it was mutually agreed that we would continue to work at Unicommerce for another two years and steer the company to further growth. In August 2017, this period comes to a successful close and we are happy to note that Unicommerce has grown and become a dominant force in the e-commerce space.
The development comes at a time when most of the company’s executives are taking exit from the company. Earlier this month, the company’s head of technology, product and engineering had resigned, followed by the exit of its vice president of Programme Management and vice president of Technology (Data Platform).
The company has been struggling to retain executives after it decided to call-off the acquisition deal from Flipkart. While most investors were pushing for the deal to happen, the founders of the company decided to run as an independent entity. As a part of its Snapdeal 2.0 strategy, or Plan B, the company is expected to hand out pink slips to over 80% of its staff.
Snapdeal had acquired Unicommerce in a cash-and-stock in April 2015. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. However, the New Delhi based online marketplace had never publicly announced the acquisition.
Prior to the acquisition, Unicommerce had raised funding from Nexus Venture Partners — an early investor in Snapdeal. The founders of Snapdeal — Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal had also invested in the company in their personal capacity.
Some reports suggest that Snapdeal has put up Unicommerce for sale, along with its logistics arm Vulcan Express. The company is selling every other business than the core unit in order to generate cash to keep the company afloat. It recently sold off its payments platform FreeCharge to Axis Bank in a deal worth ₹385 crore.