Snapdeal seller-margin cuts put SaaS at 40% of operations revenue

Snapdeal’s revenue mix shifted in Financial Year 2026, with software-as-a-service, or SaaS, contributing 40.04% of revenue from operations. The change followed marketplace seller-margin and pricing changes that lifted net merchandise value, or NMV, by 25.71% in FY2026, while marketplace revenue increased 17.53%.

How did seller-margin cuts make Snapdeal revenue lag NMV?

Snapdeal’s marketplace revenue grew more slowly than NMV because it reduced the cost of doing business for sellers, passing on operational efficiencies and lowering seller margins to support competitive customer pricing. NMV is the total list price, including taxes and discounts, of delivered units, excluding cancelled and returned units. Marketplace NMV rose from Rs 633.337 crore in FY2024 to Rs 869.555 crore in FY2025, a 37.30% increase, while delivered units rose 34.44% to 19.91 million.

The FY2025 volume strategy did not translate proportionately into marketplace monetisation. The prospectus narrative says marketplace revenue declined by Rs 3.020 crore, or 1.19%, from Rs 252.887 crore in FY2024 to Rs 248.767 crore in FY2025 after pricing changes. However, the Ind AS 108 operating-segment table reports FY2025 marketplace revenue of Rs 249.867 crore. Ind AS 108 is the Indian accounting standard for segment reporting, and Snapdeal says the segment figures are gross and do not account for inter-segment eliminations.

In FY2026, Snapdeal increased spending on customer acquisition, promotions and targeted digital campaigns. Delivered units increased 30.49% to 25.98 million and marketplace NMV reached Rs 1,093.110 crore, up 25.71% from FY2025. Marketplace revenue increased by Rs 43.808 crore to Rs 293.675 crore, or 17.53%, leaving marketplace revenue growth below NMV growth under the lower-margin model.

How did Snapdeal SaaS reach 40% of operations revenue?

Snapdeal SaaS reached 40.04% of FY2026 revenue from operations because its SaaS segment grew faster than the marketplace. SaaS revenue rose from Rs 103.581 crore in FY2024 to Rs 134.790 crore in FY2025 and Rs 204.338 crore in FY2026. That was a 51.60% increase in FY2026, compared with 29.20% growth in total revenue from operations to Rs 510.381 crore.

The SaaS business is Unicommerce’s e-commerce-enablement software offering, and its revenue is typically linked to its clients’ online-sales transaction volumes. Uniware, the relevant product, processed an annual transaction run-rate of 1,155.79 million order items in FY2026. Its client base increased from 3,502 in FY2024 to 4,178 in FY2025 and 4,615 in FY2026, comprising 1,126 enterprise clients and 3,489 small and medium business, or SMB, clients in FY2026.

The faster SaaS expansion changed the group’s disclosed mix over three years. Marketplace revenue accounted for 66.59% of revenue from operations in FY2024, 63.25% in FY2025 and 57.54% in FY2026. SaaS moved in the other direction, from 27.28% to 34.12% and then 40.04%, showing that segment growth, rather than marketplace sales alone, drove a larger part of reported revenue growth.

What marketplace scale is Snapdeal building through lower monetisation?

Snapdeal is building marketplace scale around value-conscious, middle-income users, particularly in Tier 2 and smaller Indian cities. Customers in Tier 2+ cities accounted for 16.95 million of 25.98 million delivered units in FY2026, or 65.24%. That share was broadly stable from 66.48% of 14.81 million delivered units in FY2024, while Tier 2+ delivered units increased by 7.10 million over the two-year period.

Customer activity also increased during the two years that Snapdeal identified as periods focused on scaling its business. Annual transacting customers, defined as unique mobile numbers to which at least one unit was shipped in the preceding 12 months, reached 12.16 million in FY2026. This compared with 10.43 million in FY2025 and 7.85 million in FY2024, while total delivered units increased 75.42% between FY2024 and FY2026.

The scaling effort required continuing promotion expenditure. Marketplace marketing and business-promotion expense was Rs 84.398 crore in FY2026, up from Rs 63.182 crore in FY2025 and Rs 58.546 crore in FY2024. It represented 14.67% of total expense in FY2026, compared with 13.92% in FY2025, although cost per delivered unit fell to Rs 32.49 from Rs 39.52 in FY2024.

What does Snapdeal’s changing revenue mix depend on?

Snapdeal’s revenue mix depends on both marketplace scale and Unicommerce transaction growth. Marketplace revenue was Rs 293.675 crore in FY2026, making it the largest disclosed segment despite its share falling to 57.54%. Snapdeal states that marketplace growth requires cost-effective user acquisition, greater engagement from existing users and seller product quality, while advertising pricing, digital-platform policies and competition can affect those efforts.

The SaaS contribution also depends on Snapdeal retaining control of Unicommerce. Snapdeal held 26.13% of Unicommerce eSolutions Limited’s issued and paid-up equity share capital, but consolidates it as a subsidiary under Ind AS 110 because it can appoint a majority of directors and has effective day-to-day control. If those rights or arrangements change, Snapdeal says it may no longer be able to consolidate Unicommerce’s financial results, altering the reported revenue mix.

The wider demand environment is another condition. The prospectus cites the Lattice Report showing that India’s e-commerce market increased from USD 32.5 billion in Fiscal 2020 to USD 95.8 billion in Fiscal 2025, representing a 24.1% compound annual growth rate. Snapdeal nevertheless says its FY2024-to-FY2026 trends did not match industry growth largely because of marketplace seller-margin changes, meaning industry expansion alone does not determine reported segment revenue.

Conclusion

Snapdeal’s FY2026 figures show a deliberate trade-off rather than a simple acceleration in marketplace monetisation. Seller-cost and margin changes supported a 25.71% increase in marketplace NMV and a 30.49% rise in delivered units, but marketplace revenue increased 17.53%; meanwhile, SaaS rose to 40.04% of revenue from operations as its revenue reached Rs 204.338 crore.

The next measure to watch is whether Snapdeal can sustain customer-acquisition and promotion-led unit growth without a further widening gap between NMV and marketplace revenue. The disclosed unresolved factors are digital-marketing costs, competitive seller and customer incentives, e-commerce transaction growth among Unicommerce clients, and Snapdeal’s continued rights to control Unicommerce despite its 26.13% equity holding.