Recent Acquisitions in Indian Startup Ecosystem
With startup culture taking a momentum in India Inc., lots of technology aimed ventures are coming up with their unique offerings in the marketplace. Few of them make it to the VC round while the rest of them either cease to exist or get acquired by bigger companies in the industry making little or no money.
In the recent past many tech startups got acquired by their bigger counterparts in the industry & many of them got handsome sum of capital by investors. Here’s a quick look at some of the recent acquisitions & investments made in various Indian startups.
1) SnapDeal acquires Hyderabad-based mobile technology startup MartMobi
E-commerce major SnapDeal recently acquired Hyderabad based mobile technology startup ‘MartMobi’ for an undisclosed amount. The move is in line to strengthen their mobility platform for merchants.
SnapDeal co-founder & COO Rohit Bansal said that the reason behind focusing more on mobile based platform is because of the major orders that are coming from mobile-based devices (i.e upto 75%). ‘MartMobi’ currently serves around 150 clients & have 15 member team.
Founded in 2010, SnapDeal has over 40 million registered users & is a key player in $3 billion Indian e-commerce industry.
2) Digital marketing training company ‘Digital Vidya’ acquires ‘Digital Academy’ India
The Digital Marketing training industry is growing by leaps & bounds and it is believed that among various ad channels, digital will show the fastest growth of 37%. And the same was reflected in a recent acquisition of ‘Digital Academy’ by ‘Digital Vidya’.
‘Digital Vidya’ was started by Pradeep Chopra (an IIT Delhi Alumni & serial entrepreneur) & Kapil Nakra in 2009 which offers customized in-house digital marketing training programs for corporations and has served over 100 organizations such as Philips, Intuit, GE, Cisco, Times Internet, Citibank, Adobe, etc.
This acquisition will help ‘Digital Vidya’ to expand their reach and further enhance the quality of their digital marketing certification programs for their customers and partners by leveraging the strengths and experience of Digital Academy India.
3) Twitter co-founder Biz Stone invests in India’s Lookup, a chat application for local commerce
Deepak Ravindran started ‘Lookup’, a chat application meant for local commerce. It is absolutely free for both consumers & business. Listed as an ‘Essential App’ in ‘Google Play’ and as a ‘Top free app’ in the communication category on ‘Google Play’.
The current app downloads stand at over 2,00,000 & the app will be live across 9 cities by end of this year. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has invested an undisclosed amount in the startup and will serve as an advisor to the company, which is a big step forward for Lookup.
4) Livspaces’ second acquisition in two months, Dwll.in now part of the team
With the aim of creating India’s only end-to-end home design and decor platform, ‘Livspace’ acquired Dwll.in, which is a curated online network of interior designers.
This is the second acquisition by ‘Livespace’ in two months. According to Anuj Srivastava the Co-founder of ‘Livspace’, the home decor and design space in India, and the overall market size is close to USD 30 billion dollars.
‘Livspace’ wishes to create India’s biggest catalogue of designer looks for home owners and the largest curated community marketplace of home designers.
5) HDFC invests in CarDekho.com
‘CarDekho’ dominates the online car research market with over 17 million visits on its portal every month. Amit Jain, CEO of Jaipur based Girnar Software Pvt. Ltd. which owns ‘CarDekho’ said that their vision is to provide car loan to every car buyer in the country, even before they finalize upon the car. Out of the 80,000 crore Indian car loan market, HDFC Bank is the leader with 35% market share. The investment comes at a time when company is raising a Series B funding round worth $50 million from Hillhouse Capital, Tybourne Capital and existing investor Sequoia.
Do share your views on the mergers & acquisitions trend among tech startups in India & about their future course.