SoftBank Group Corp (SBG) on Wednesday recognised losses of $1.4 billion in 2016-17 from its India investments — Snapdeal and Ola.
SoftBank, a leading telecom operator in Japan, recorded loss from financial instruments of 160,419 million Japanese Yen ($1.4 billion) in its consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended March 2017.
“This mainly resulted from recording a loss as the amount of changes in the fair value of the financial instruments from March 31, 2016, to March 31, 2017,” the company said in a statement.
The telecom major said financial instruments included preferred shares of Jasper Infotech, which runs Snapdeal, an e-commerce site in India, and ANI Technologies, which runs Ola, a taxi booking platform also in India.
The loss represents impairments of SBG’s investments in subsidiaries and associates, including Starfish I.
Starfish I is an intermediate holding company, which owns preferred shares in Jasper Infotech.
SoftBank said competitive e-commerce market in India caused a material decrease in net asset value of Starfish I as of March 31, 2017, and therefore SBG impaired the carrying amount of its shares in the company, to the amount equivalent to its net asset value.
SoftBank said that there was no impact of the loss on the company’s consolidated financial results in 2016-17.