2014 In Review: Here Are The Top Startup Acquisitions Of The Year

Year 2014 witnessed the rise of big ticket startup fundings and the much needed M&A activity in the Indian startup ecosystem. Ranging from ecommerce to television rights, it feels like 2014 was an year of acquisitions. Following is a list of some of the most notable acquisitions in 2014 in the Indian space.

Little Eye Labs

Performance Analysis and Monitoring tool that helps identify and fix performance problems for Android apps; Little Eye Labs was acquired by Facebook earlier this year. The financial terms of the deal were left undisclosed. However, as per the media reports, the deal was somewhere around $10-15 Mn. Founded by Giridhar Murthy, Kumar Rangarajan, Satyam Kandula and  Lakshman Kakkirala, Little Eye Labs provides app behaviour insights, enables easy benchmarking and optimizes the resources. The startup was a part of the GSF Accelerator and had also raised an undisclosed amount in funding led by Ventureast Tenet Fund.

Myntra

Online fashion and lifestyle retailer Myntra was acquired early this year by Flipkart, in a bid to expand its presence in fashion and lifestyle segment. According to reports, Flipkart had put in $300 Mn for the acquisition that was said to be one of the biggest in the Indian ecommerce space. Myntra was founded by Mukesh Bansal, Ashutosh Sac and Rishi Ranjan. Flipkart’s and Myntra’s common investors Tiger Global Management, Accel Partners and Sofina Capital had received more shares in the merged entity. Tiger Global and Accel Partners first proposed the deal last year.

Bookpad

This year, Yahoo made its first acquisition in India, when it acquired Bangalore based Bookpad. Bookpad’s flagship product DocsPad provides a set of cloud APIs to app developers which can be used to receive instant document handling within their respective applications thus enabling customers to preview, edit and manage any documents on their cloud – right in their application user interface. Yahoo was not the only one looking to acquire the online document viewer, Autodesk and Dropbox were also eyeing Bookpad for a possible acquisition. The acquisition which took place in September this year was said to be around $15 Mn. Bookpad was founded by Aditya Bandi,  Niketh Sabbineni, Ashwik Battu.

Network18

Founded in 1996 by Raghav Bahl, Network18 emerged as a major player in broadcasting rights, print internet, film and mobile content. Mass media company Network18 was acquired by Reliance in May this year for INR 4000 Cr. Network18 currently has HomeShop18, CNN-IBN, First Post, IBN 18 Broadcast Ltd which are only few on the list of it’s several media entities .

Gaadi.com

Gaadi.com was founded in 2008 by Ankur Warikoo, Vivek Pahwa, and Umang Kumar. It  allows user to buy and sell new and pre-owned cars. The company was acquired by Cardekho.com in September this year. The combined Cardekho and Gaadi entity is expected to become the largest online auto classifieds play by revenue and traffic; it expects to earn INR 500 Cr. in revenues with a 50-50 split between used and new car sales. Cardekho has put in about $11 Mn for this acquisition.

Tastykhana

Pune-based Tastykhana was acquired by Rocket internet backed FoodPanda for an undisclosed amount. Tastykhana currently has tie-up with over 9000 restaurants across India majorly situated in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, among others. Prior to acquisition, Tastykhana had raised $5 Mn in Investment from Delivery Hero. Tastykhana was founded by Shachin Bharadwaj and Sheldon Dsouza.

Gecko

Bangalore-based Connovate Technologies offers low-powered Bluetooth device Gecko which can add gesture control to smartphones was acquired by Hong Kong-based consumer electronics company Binatone. The financial terms of the deal were left undisclosed.  According to terms, Gecko will be merged with Binatone’s subsidiary called Hubble Connected, and embed Hubble’s IoT platform for all devices.

Dineout

Delhi-based Dineout was founded by Ankit Mehrotra, Sahil Jain,Nikhil Bakshi & Vivek Kapoor. Started as a small table reservation service it received accolades for its service and ease to use. Timescity, which was launched by Times Group indexing information about various restaurants acquired Dineout in April 2014 and expanded its own service by enabling reservations online.

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This is part of our special series, In Focus: 2014 In Review, in which we showcase the highlights of 2014 and what’s to come next year in the Indian Tech Ecosystem. Stay tuned for more.

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