Naukri.com’s Parent Firm To Acquire Highorbit Careers For INR 80.82 Cr

Info Edge (India) Ltd, the parent company of online job portal Naukri.com, has announced that it will acquire Highorbit Careers in an all cash deal worth INR 80.82 Cr. Highorbit Careers operates popular job portals hirist.com and iimjobs.com.

Founded nine years ago by Tarun Matta, an IIT-IIM alumnus, Highorbit’s iimjobs.com caters to the job needs of those graduating from institutions such as IITs and IIMs.

“The company has agreed to acquire 100% share capital on a fully diluted basis. Post the completion of the acquisition, iimjobs will become wholly-owned subsidiary of the company,” Info Edge said in a BSE filing.

It added that iimjobs’ brand proposition combined with Info Edge’s distribution network would enable Info Edge to better serve its recruiter clients and job seekers by tailoring its services as per their requirements.

The BSE filing also stated that the proposed acquisition would help the Info Edge company to further consolidate its position in the online recruitment solutions segment where its flagship brand Naukri.com already has an established leadership position.

The deal is expected to close by June 30.

The acquired company, Highorbit Careers, had a turnover of INR 16.6 Cr as on March 31, 2019. Its subsidiaries hirist.com and iimjobs.com have over 23K job postings and receives about 1.8 Mn job applications every month.

Info Edge was established about 20 years ago when the internet had just started to boom. It has more than 69 Mnregistered job seekers on its platform. It also offers products such as Resume Database Access, Job Postings and Response Management Tool to its pool of more than 76K corporate clients. It claims to have at least 475K active jobs available at its platform.

Hitesh Oberoi, copromoter, MD and CEO of Info Edge said that iimjobs had managed to carve a niche for itself and had built a great brand in the premium job seeker community.

“Its value proposition strongly complements Naukri’s proposition to its customers. Given our massive customer base in Naukri, together with Tarun, we are confident of taking this business to the next level over the next few years,” he said.

“We believe the multi-brand approach will extend and expand the value chain in the recruitment space for Naukri.com,” said Chintan Thakkar, CFO of Info Edge

The process of recruitment and job seeking is undergoing a shift through automation, AI tools, and HR Tech. Considering these factors, recruitment portals are adopting and acquiring new means and even each other to expand their operations.

In January 2019, OLX Group acquired Mumbai-based online recruitment marketplace Aasaanjobs, aiming to expand into the blue and grey collar jobs market.

The search engine giant Google has stepped into the market as well. In April last year, it integrated job seeking to its search engine. When users search for “jobs near me”, “jobs for freshers”, or similar job-seeking queries, they see in-depth results allowing them to seek relevant opportunities.