Snapdeal sales nearly doubled as adjusted EBITDA loss widened

Snapdeal’s marketplace sales, measured by net merchandise value (NMV), rose 72.60% to Rs 1,093.110 crore in Financial Year 2026 from Rs 633.337 crore in Financial Year 2024, while adjusted EBITDA loss widened to Rs 50.251 crore from Rs 36.720 crore. Higher delivered-unit volumes and lower fixed-cost ratios did not offset reduced monetisation and higher operating costs.

Why did Snapdeal’s marketplace sales grow while its loss widened?

Snapdeal increased marketplace volume substantially in Financial Year 2026, but revenue did not grow at the same rate as NMV. NMV, which is the total list price including taxes and discounts of units delivered through the platform, excluding cancelled and returned units, reached Rs 1,093.110 crore in FY26, compared with Rs 869.555 crore in FY25 and Rs 633.337 crore in FY24. Delivered units increased to 25.98 million in FY26 from 19.91 million in FY25 and 14.81 million in FY24, while annual transaction customers rose to 12.16 million from 10.43 million and 7.85 million, respectively.

Marketplace revenue from operations was Rs 293.675 crore in FY26, up from Rs 249.867 crore in FY25 and Rs 252.887 crore in FY24. Revenue therefore rose 16.13% between FY24 and FY26, compared with NMV growth of 72.60%. Marketplace revenue as a proportion of NMV declined to 26.87% in FY26 from 28.74% in FY25 and 39.93% in FY24, a 13.06-percentage-point reduction over two years.

Snapdeal attributes the lower revenue-to-NMV ratio to its zero-commission model, which is intended to reduce sellers’ cost of doing business and support lower prices for customers. The strategy requires additional marketplace volume to create enough contribution after delivery costs to cover marketing, technology, employee and other operating expenses. The FY26 result shows that greater scale reduced the loss relative to NMV, but not the absolute adjusted EBITDA loss.

Adjusted EBITDA means adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation. For the marketplace, Snapdeal calculates the measure from EBITDA after specified additions and deductions, including exceptional items, share-based payment expense, specified provisions, other income and lease-related payments. The adjusted EBITDA loss increased by Rs 2.245 crore in FY26 from FY25, although it improved to 4.60% of NMV from 5.52%; it was 5.80% of NMV in FY24.

What happened to Snapdeal’s contribution margin and unit economics?

Snapdeal retained positive contribution per delivered unit in FY26, but total marketplace contribution margin fell from FY24 as monetisation declined. Contribution margin is marketplace revenue from operations less marketplace logistics expense. It was Rs 109.472 crore in FY26, compared with Rs 111.028 crore in FY25 and Rs 145.305 crore in FY24.

Contribution margin represented 10.01% of NMV in FY26, down from 12.77% in FY25 and 22.94% in FY24. This change reflects revenue from operations falling as a share of NMV while logistics costs remained near 17% of NMV. The measure does not include marketing, hosting, software, employee-related and other expenses that must also be covered before the marketplace can report positive adjusted EBITDA.

On a unit basis, marketplace revenue from operations was Rs 113.04 per delivered unit in FY26 and logistics expense was Rs 70.90, resulting in Rs 42.14 of contribution margin per delivered unit. Logistics expense per unit increased from Rs 69.72 in FY25 but was below Rs 72.62 in FY24. Marketplace logistics expense in aggregate rose to Rs 184.203 crore in FY26 from Rs 138.839 crore in FY25 and Rs 107.582 crore in FY24 as delivered units increased.

Snapdeal uses third-party logistics providers, or 3PLs, for deliveries and says its courier-allocation engine selects a partner based on cost, delivery speed and prior pin-code-level performance. The engine processed a monthly average of 63.82 million data points as of March 31, 2026. For positive unit contribution to translate into segment profitability, revenue per unit must remain above logistics cost per unit by enough to cover costs outside delivery.

Which costs improved, and which costs rose at Snapdeal?

Snapdeal reduced several expense ratios to NMV in FY26, although logistics and marketing spending increased in absolute terms. Marketing and business-promotion expense was Rs 84.398 crore in FY26, compared with Rs 63.182 crore in FY25 and Rs 58.546 crore in FY24. The expense was 7.72% of NMV in FY26, compared with 7.27% in FY25 and 9.24% in FY24.

Marketing and business-promotion expense per delivered unit was Rs 32.49 in FY26, up from Rs 31.73 in FY25 but below Rs 39.52 in FY24. Snapdeal said the FY26 increase of Rs 0.76 per unit from FY25 reflected calibrated investment in expanding the mobile-app user base. The company reported that app users have better retention behaviour, but the stated financial model still depends on marketing costs not rising as quickly as contribution generated by new units.

Hosting charges and software expenses together fell to 1.75% of NMV in FY26 from 2.75% in FY25 and 3.20% in FY24. Hosting charges were Rs 11.316 crore in FY26 and software expense was Rs 7.829 crore, versus Rs 15.830 crore and Rs 8.077 crore, respectively, in FY25. These costs include cloud-based hosting for applications, the mobile app and websites, content-delivery-network services, customer relationship management systems and analytics tools.

All other marketplace expenses declined to Rs 56.180 crore in FY26 from Rs 71.945 crore in FY25 and Rs 103.201 crore in FY24. Their NMV share fell to 5.14% from 8.27% and 16.29%, respectively. Snapdeal describes these expenses as primarily fixed in nature, and stated that the combined ratio of marketing, hosting and software, and all other expenses fell by 14.13 percentage points of NMV between FY24 and FY26.

Can repeat users and mobile orders support Snapdeal’s marketplace economics?

Snapdeal’s FY26 delivered-unit mix was concentrated in repeat customers and mobile-app orders. Repeat customers, defined as customers to whom more than one order has been shipped through the marketplace, numbered 8.47 million in FY26, compared with 7.02 million in FY25 and 5.44 million in FY24. They accounted for 82.91% of delivered units in FY26, up from 81.09% in FY25 and 82.77% in FY24.

The mobile app accounted for 89.83% of delivered units in FY26, compared with 77.84% in FY25 and 66.12% in FY24. Snapdeal reported that 99.72% of FY26 delivered units were purchased through either its mobile app or mobile website. Its conversion rate, defined as orders placed divided by visits, was 4.93% in FY26, marginally below 4.99% in FY25 but above 4.26% in FY24.

Snapdeal said 72.69% of FY26 orders were placed without users entering a search term, attributing this outcome to recommendation tools and personalised product feeds. The marketplace also reported that 83.75% of FY26 delivered units had price points below Rs 599 and that non-metro cities accounted for 82.22% of delivered units. Snapdeal served an average of 18,972 pin codes during FY26.

The company’s disclosed plan is to expand its largely small and medium enterprise seller network, improve customer experience and continue refining operating costs. That plan depends on maintaining product quality and delivery performance while lower seller costs are passed through into value pricing. It also depends on repeat and app-led demand producing sufficient incremental contribution after logistics and customer-acquisition costs.

Conclusion

Snapdeal’s FY26 results show that marketplace scale expanded faster than revenue capture and adjusted EBITDA. NMV rose 72.60% and delivered units rose 75.42% from FY24 to FY26, while the adjusted EBITDA loss increased by Rs 13.531 crore. Positive contribution of Rs 42.14 per delivered unit and lower ratios for hosting, software and other expenses indicate reduced cost intensity in selected categories, but the lower monetisation rate reduced the margin pool available to cover total costs.

The next measure to watch is whether Snapdeal’s disclosed zero-commission proposition, seller-network expansion and cost-efficiency initiatives can grow NMV without a further decline in marketplace revenue as a share of NMV. Its plan also includes app-led customer growth, personalised shopping tools, 3PL cost alignment and centralised cloud and shared-service arrangements. The unresolved issue is whether these measures can contain logistics and marketing intensity sufficiently for positive per-unit contribution to produce marketplace adjusted EBITDA profitability.