Six months earlier in 2016, Alibaba and its affiliate invested in Indias shopping website Snapdeal and online payment firm Paytm in separate deals. The Paytm deal alone was put at USD 680 million to USD 890 million.
These two deals are part of more than half a dozen investments by Chinese companies into Indias e-commerce sector over the last 18 months, in what many analysts believe is growing Chinese interest.
Sandeep Ladda, leader of the technology and e-commerce sector practice at consultants PWC, said: Chinese investors are looking at globalising and there have been quite a few instances of investments in India. They see India as a big opportunity.
Investments by Chinese companies into India totalled only USD 1.2 billion between April 2000 and September 2015 partly because of security concerns and political distrust of India caused by a festering border row with China.
This jumped to more than USD 2.3 billion between June and August in 2016 alone, according to calculations by CCircle Network, a financial data services group. The new data includes a USD 900 million buyout by a Chinese consortium led by Beijing Miteno Communication Technology of advertising tech start-up media.net.
Indias ecommerce industry is forecast to grow in revenue from USD 38 billion in 2016 to USD 120 billion by 2020, according to a report by the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India and research outfit Forrester.
Over 400 million Indians in a population of 1.25 billion are estimated to be online, with 25 million new Internet users added every year.
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