1mg acquires Dawailelo

Gurugram based digital healthcare platform 1mg has acquired Varanasi based Dawailelo.com. Post-acquisition, the team will be working with the 1mg ePharmacy team. The acquisition will help the 1mg team to expand the company’s footprint across most parts of India.

This acquisition comes on the heels of 1mg’s recent $15 Mn Series C funding. The new funds were fuelled in by HBM Healthcare Investments along with existing investors Sequoia India, Maverick Capital Ventures, Omidyar Network and Kae Capital. 1mg has been on an acquisition spree since last year. In April 2016, 1mg had raised $6 Mn from Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, Omidyar Network and Deep Kalra (co-founder of travel portal MakeMyTrip).

Founded in 2013, Dawailelo is a tech-based facilitator in the healthcare space. It helps individuals buy medicines, consult with doctors and get lab tests done. Dawailelo was co-founded by duo Aditya Agrawal (CEO) and Arpit Sarin. Agrawal has an MBA in marketing from Banaras Hindu University and co-founder Arpit Sarin has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering.

On the other hand 1mg, earlier called HealthkartPlus, was the drug search business of Healthkart, which was rebranded and spun off into a separate entity as 1mg in April 2015. The company operates an online marketplace for medicines apart from facilitating doctor’s appointment and diagnostic test booking. The company claims to have over 10 Mn app downloads.

Paytm Acquires Near.in

Mobile wallet and e-commerce company Paytm has bought home service marketplace Near.in for an undisclosed amount. The move is part of its increasing focus on online to offline (O2O) and Hyperlocal commerce. The company expects more than half of its sales to come from the Hyperlocal channel by 2016.

Near.in (run by Thumbspot Inc.), which connects users with local businesses for home services through a marketplace app, was founded in December 2014. It last raised a seed funding of $300,000 by a group of Angel investors. Other than this there are investors from Healthkart, SAP Labs, and Aspiring Minds. Near has a significant network of local service providers in place and a stellar team leading it.

Paytm is India’s largest mobile commerce platform. With its mobile first strategy, Paytm does more than $100 Million transactions of various digital and physical goods every month. Paytm Wallet is India’s dominant mobile Paytm service platform. Based in Delhi-NCR, its investors include Ant Financials (AliPay), SAIF partners, Sapphire Venture and Silicon Valley Bank.

The company also plans to venture into travel with Hotel, air and rail ticket bookings in partnership with online travel companies such as Goibibo and Yatra and budget accommodation marketplaces OYO Rooms and ZO Rooms. The company already sells bus tickets. Apart from tying up with online travel partners, the company will also allow offline travel agents to list on its platform.