SoftBank, the largest private investor in India’s startup ecosystem records $1.4 billion loss from Indian investments
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Japanese conglomerate Soft Bank group on wednesday reported a valuation loss of $1.4 billion, or over INR 9,000 crore on its two flagship investments in India, cab-hailing app Ola and e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal.
Soft Bank’s annual report for the financial year 2017 says that the company “registered loss from financial instruments at Financial Assets and Liabilities at Fair Value through Profit or Loss (FVTPL) of ¥160,419 million ($1.4 billion).” This mainly resulted from a fall in the fair value of financial instruments at FVTPL from March 2016 to March 2017.
SoftBank, one of the biggest investors in Indian start-ups, is trying to sell Snapdeal to bigger rival Flipkart Ltd for about $1 billion. According to a research, Snapdeal clocked revenues of Rs. 1,457 crore in fiscal 2015-16, while losses stood at Rs. 2,960 crore. Ola clocked revenues of Rs. 664 crore, while losses stood at Rs. 1,760 crore during the same period.
Despite the losses in India, Sofbank, notched up its second-best annual profit on cost cuts and a rise in subscribers at Sprint Corp. SoftBank’s operating profit for the year to end-March climbed 13 percent to 1.03 trillion yen ($9 billion) on flat revenue growth.