Inc42 Daily Brief
Stay Ahead With Daily News & Analysis on India’s Tech & Startup Economy
Gurgaon-based online managed marketplace, ShopClues,, has acquired Bangalore-based mobile payments startup Momoe Technologies.
The rumour of the deal was earlier reported in March this year.
As part of the deal, India Quotient, IDG Ventures India and Jungle Ventures, who invested in Momoe, will get both cash and stock in ShopClues.
With the acquisition of Momoe, ShopClues plans to bring innovative digital payments for its merchants and customers on its platform. The portal will now use Momoe’s technology to boost its payment network for merchants and will look to tie this in its hyperlocal commerce business that it started in August 2015.
Established in April 2014, mobile payment app Momoe is the developer of an app that enables people to make payments to brick-and-mortar (offline) merchants using their mobile phones. Unlike Paytm and Mobikwik, which facilitate cashless payments with a virtual wallet, Momoe’s app works by linking credit cards, debit cards, and net banking. It has tied up with more than 3,000 brick-and-mortar merchants in Bangalore and Pune.
Momoe was founded by Utkarsh Biradar, Karthik Vaidyanathan, Ganesh Balakrishnan, Neelesh Bam and Aiman Ashraf. The venture had raised $1.2 Mn in seed funding in December 2014 from three investors viz IDG Ventures, Jungle Ventures and India Quotient.
Lately, ecommerce firms are eyeing the payments companies for acquisition or partnerships in order to reduce the dependency on cash and make online shopping more convenient.
Earlier in March, Amazon announced its plans to own digital wallet services. It also bought Noida-based online payment solutions provider, EMVANTAGE Payments, for an undisclosed amount. Flipkart too re-entered the payments space with the launch of its mobile wallet Flipkart Money.
Ecommerce companies in India are currently focusing on four identified pillars of its business – ecommerce, logistics, payments and advertising.
In January this year, ShopClues raised close to $100 Mn funding, led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, and has is valued at $1.1 Bn. The company is targeting gross merchandise sales of $3 Bn by the end of fiscal 2016-17.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.