TVS Group acquires CheckGaadi.com

TVS & Sons Group has acquired Bengaluru headquartered CheckGaadi.com, a provider of vehicle inspection technology and CRM solutions. CheckGaadi was founded in January 2015. The startup provides hassle free “vehicle inspection services” for 2-wheelers and 4-wheelers vehicles. It also provides bike-servicing on its platform.

With this move, proprietary technology of CheckGaadi will be transferred to TVS. It will continue business operations as part of TVS. CheckGaadi scaled up to a team size of 30 across 11 major cities serving close to 75,000 customers till date. The CheckGaadi customer engagement solution relies on predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms.

It makes use of vehicle health information to make predictions about its future and automatically determines the best time and context to connect with the customer. On the other hand, the TVS Group is a leading supplier of automotive components. The automobile market in India is pegged at $125 Billion. Out of which, $100 Billion is the estimated share of automobile sale and remaining $25 Billion including services. It is expected to grow at a rate of about 10% to a whopping $225 Billion by 2020.

In May 2017, Mumbai-based online automobile classifieds platform, CarTrade’s parent company MXC Solutions, acquired vehicle inspection and valuation venture Adroit Inspection in an all-cash deal. In June 2017, Gurugram - based used car marketplace Spinny raised $1 Mn Seed funding led by Blume Ventures, Indian Angel Network, and FreeCharge. Other startups that work in this segment apart from CheckGaadi include Droom, CarWale, MahindraFirstChoice, Carnation, CarDekho, CarTrade, along with some classifieds players such as Quikr and OLX.

Paytm acqui-hires Shopsity

Paytm, India’s largest mobile payments and commerce platform has acquired the team at Shopsity, a Delhi based startup that offered O2O solutions to small retail stores. This move is in line with Paytm vision to create strong seller focused services to its offline merchants.

Shopsity is focused on small unorganized retailers, providing them with tools to attract and retain customers. Paytm is actively working to strengthen seller services for the 800,000 strong offline sellers on the Paytm ecosystem. Launched in March 2015, Shopsity is an O2O mobile platform, where you get to see what’s selling in stores nearby. During July last year, the platform had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Shopclues and Droom, and Netprice.

In July, Paytm started accepting payments at retail chains like Spencer’s Retail, Heritage Fresh, More, WH Smith, Kendriya Bhandar, V2 Retail, Value Plus and Pai International (Pai Mobile). This followed its tie-up with quick-service-restaurants such as KFC, Pizza Hut, Cafe Coffee Day, Costa Coffee, Barista, Vaango, among others. Paytm claims to have 125 million wallets.

In September, Paytm had acqui-hired EduKart, an e-learning marketplace for an undisclosed amount. In January this year, Paytm acquired Shifu, a consumer behavior prediction platform for an undisclosed amount. A month before that, the company acquired Gurgaon-based services marketplace Near.in for $2 million.