SoftBank's Lydia Jett joins Snapdeal board

SoftBank is the largest stakeholder in Snapdeal, which saw a major drop in its valuation recently

At a time when Tokyo-based telecom and investment major SoftBank is finding it tough to convince fellow investors to sell off Gurgaon based online marketplace company Snapdeal, SoftBank Group Corp's Lydia Bly Jett has joined the board of Jasper Infotech.

SoftBank, which invested around $900 million in Snapdeal and is the major stakeholder in the company, as well as digital payments platform Freecharge has sent Jett as an additional director.

According to company documents sourced from Tofler, SoftBank Group's chief operating officer Jonathan Bullock resigned from the board in February 2017 followed by the appointment of managing partner Kabir Misra on 10 March. Jett's appointment is the third board movement from SoftBank to Snapdeal. The move comes at a time when the company is facing financial woes of its own.

SoftBank owns around 33 percent of Jasper Infotech and is the largest stakeholder in Snapdeal.

Other than Snapdeal, Bullock had also stepped down from the boards of ANI Technologies, which owns and operates cab-hailing platform Ola and real estate portal Housing.com.

According to official documents, the Japanese major has two seats on the seven-member Jasper Infotech board. Other members include early investors Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners. Sources also added that the board convened on Tuesday as well in hopes to resolve issues around SoftBank's plans to sell Snapdeal, which has been strongly opposed by the early stage investors.

Co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Bharti Enterprises vice-chairman Akhil Gupta are also on board. According to four sources privy to the developments, while early stage investors in Snapdeal, Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners are confident of the company's present business plan and want it to head for an IPO in the next two years, Softbank wants to immediately sell its stake and hedge its bets in other e-commerce ventures, something which has caused a major rift between the two parties.

Also according to sources, while Softbank is trying to sell its stake in Snapdeal, where it is the biggest shareholder and has invested close to a billion dollars, it has also assured the e-commerce company of giving close to $200 million so that it can go ahead with its business plans and head for an IPO.

And then there is a question of valuation. Kalaari and Nexus are livid with the valuation Softbank is trying to sell Snapdeal at. While, till December 2016 the Snapdeal's valuation was pegged at a heft $6.5 billion making it the second most valuable Indian e-commerce firm after Flipkart, Softbank is apparently planning to sell it for between $600 million to $800 million.

Also not all of Snapdeal is loss making, Its logistics arm Vulcan Express Private Limited and e-commerce management firm Unicommerce are either profitable of would be so in the days to come. Also its wallet Freecharge is still the number two wallet player in the country.

According to Jett's profile she is a graduate from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and London School of Economics. She joined SoftBank in September 2015 and currently sits on the boards of Tokopedia, Fetch Robotics, InMobi and Quixey.