Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan May Buy Stake In Parent Company Of India's Snapdeal: Report

Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Canada's largest single-profession pension fund, may buy a "significant minority interest" in Jasper Infotech, which operates Indian online shopping site Snapdeal, the Economic Times reported Wednesday, citing three people it didn't name.

Jasper isn't raising more money through this deal, which involves some early investors selling a part or all of their holdings in the Indian company, the newspaper reported. The prospective sellers included eBay Inc., which had already sold a portion of its stake earlier this year, Sequoia Capital and Saama Capital, Economic Times reported.

The proposed transaction valued Jasper Infotech at about $6.5 billion, more than a third higher than the close to $4.7 billion value attached to its business when Foxconn Technology teamed up with Snapdeal's biggest backer SoftBank Group Corp. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., to invest $500 million in the Indian company, the newspaper reported.

That round of funding raised Jasper's total to over $1 billion. Snapdeal is in intense competition with Amazon.com, Inc.'s Indian operations and local market leader by gross value of goods sold, Flipkart, which has raised about three times more money from investors, including New York hedge fund Tiger Global Management.

The Canadian pension fund, which manages retirement investments of 311,000 teachers in Ontario, had 154.5 billion Canadian dollars ($116 billion) in net assets as of December 31, 2014, according to its website.