Snapdeal partners with Coolpad and Piaggio, plans to expand tech team to 2k by year-end

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Coolpad Group recently announced its entry into the Indian market and an exclusive partnership with online marketplace Snapdeal.

"With Coolpad Dazen, we want to lead the next wave of disruption in the Indian smartphone market, with high quality devices, game-changing specs and innovation designed especially for our Indian customers," Coolpad Dazen India CEO Varun Sharma said in a statement.

"At Snapdeal, we are committed to making Coolpad's maiden launch in India a big success. We are positive that we will see a tremendous response from our wide user base towards this launch," Snapdeal Senior Vice President - Electronics and Home, Tony Navin said.

The Italian two-wheeler maker Piaggio has also partnered with Snapdeal recently to come up with an online store, the company said in a statement.

"The exclusive brand store will showcase the entire range of Vespa scooters. Vespa fans will now be able to book their Vespa on a click of a button," it added. The partnership with Snapdeal is targeted especially towards a younger segment of consumers who are digitally active and prefer purchases that provide easy access and transactions without investing much time, the company said.

"Today's generation loves online shopping and prefers brands that provide buyer friendly shopping options. Hence we decided to launch a virtual store that will offer the fastest possible Vespa buying experience," Piaggio Vehicles Pvt Ltd, Executive Vice President - 2W Business, Sanjeev Goyle said.

Through this collaboration, the company aims to take its relationship with consumers to the next level, he added. As part of the initiative, the entire range of Vespa models -- Vespa, VX, Vespa S and Vespa Elegante, would be available at the online store at a booking amount of Rs 5,000.

"We want to create a unique shopping experience for our consumers where they have access to the entire Vespa Scooters' portfolio," Snapdeal, Senior Vice President, Electronics and Home, Tony Navin said.

E-Commerce major Snapdeal is also planning to double the strength of technology team to 2,000 by the year-end in its bid to augment cloud platform and technology operations, and has appointed Gaurav Gupta as Vice President Engineering. In his new role, Gupta will spearhead the company's cloud platform and technology infrastructure, Snapdeal said in a statement.

Gupta comes with over 13 years of experience across firms like Cisco, Symantec, CloudVelox, Vontu and Neopath networks. With one of the largest cloud deployments in India, Snapdeal expects to more than quadruple its infrastructure in the next year or so.

Besides, the company looks at doubling the size of its technology team from the current 1,000 people by the end of this year, the statement said. The company has also made a few senior hires in this team, who will play a key role in building a future ready and innovative platform. Bhuvan Gupta and Jeyendran Venugopal recently joined Snapdeal as Vice President Engineering and Vice President Technology Advisor, respectively.

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