Dineout acquires inResto Service

Hotel Reservation Platform Dineout has acquired Bengaluru based inResto Service Pvt. Ltd. Dineout, part of Times Internet Ltd was founded in 2012. It has listings of over 20,000 restaurants and operates in seven Indian cities. Dineout has raised an undisclosed amount in funding so far in January 2014.

Food tech companies have been adding new services to consolidate its market share in the fast growing space. Deepinder Goyal founded Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd. launched services to reserves a table, book cabs and make payments on its app as well. InResto has so far seated over 1 Million restaurant diners in three cities in the six months since its launch.

The acquisition will ensure that restaurants get one dashboard to manage different functions like reservation, home delivery, takeaways, customer feedback and mobile payments and other restaurant management function. Post the acquisition the whole team at inResto will join Dineout in Bengaluru.

In coming months, Dineout is planning to launch a developer platform that will enable any service across the food tech ecosystem to integrate with them to reach a wider set of restaurants. 

Times Internet acquires Moneysights

Moneysights founded in 2009, by ex employees of InMobi, Mukesh Kalra, and Santosh Nalvani, was a digital platform where one could buy and manage investments products. In 2012, however, the platform had to close its operations due to lack of funding. Moneysights had earlier raised funds in June 2011 and Times Internet now buys it.

Times Internet is a unit of Bennett and Coleman and Co Ltd. was established in 1999 and operates a portfolio of web and mobile properties that engage millions of users globally. It is currently not clear whether Times Internet plans to revive Moneysights as a separate service or integrate the service to its existing properties like The Economic Times. It is not clear that whether Times Internet plans to keep Moneysights branding.

Moneysights will compete with Aditya Birla group MyUniverse that has a tie up with Network 18 financial information portal Money Control. Online insurance policy aggregator Policybazaar had also launched a financial advisory services platform called Paisabazaar in August this year. The platform sells loans, credit cards, and mutual funds among others.

In previous acquisitions, Times Internet had acquired a majority stake in coupon marketplace CouponDunia in May this year and had merged its deals site with TimesDeal with the company. It had also acquired restaurant-booking service DineOut in April this year. This was after TimesCity had tied-up with DineOut last year to offer table-booking service. it had also acquired Musicfellas.com an online market place for independent artists to sell their songs in February this year.

Times Internet had also invested in shorts, a mobile app for short top stories. It had also funded GradeStack, an online course for students. It also backed Skift.com, a New York based travel intelligence and information portal. Times Internet is a part of The Times of India Group.