Snapdeal, India’s largest online marketplace, said on Thursday that it has enabled more than 150 of its sellers to raise over Rs 50 crore through ‘Capital Assist'.

'Capital Assist' is Snapdeal's programme to enable 1 million small businesses to do business online within the next three years. The programme, launched in August 2014, enables easier availability of capital for Snapdeal sellers.

"We currently have 100,000 sellers on Snapdeal and are looking to scale this to 250,000 sellers by the end of this year and 1 million within the next three years. We realised that SMBs in India face major hurdles in terms of meeting their working capital requirements and raising low cost capital while attempting to grow their business. Capital Assist was launched in order to help our sellers overcome this challenge and we have seen early success towards the launch of this service," said Aakash Moondhra, CFO, Snapdeal.

"Our aim is to empower more than 1,000 of our sellers in the next one year through this platform. We have also seen a positive response from the funding partners and we hope to extend the network to 25 banks and NBFCs by end of this year," he added.

Over a dozen banks and NBFCs have partnered in this initiative to provide low-cost financing to sellers on Snapdeal depending on their current and future business requirements.

rajesh.kurup@thehindu.co.in