Info Edge acquires iimjobs.com

Info Edge (India) Ltd, the operator of jobs site Naukri.com and real estate portal 99acres.com has agreed to acquire the company behind jobs portal iimjobs.com. Mumbai-listed Info Edge said in a stock-exchange filing it will buy Highorbit Careers Pvt. Ltd for Rs 80.82 crore ($11.6 million) in cash.

Info Edge said the proposed acquisition will help it consolidate its position in the online recruitment solutions segment where Naukri.com already has a leadership position. Delhi-based iimjobs.com is focused on middle- to senior-level hiring in fields such as finance, consulting, business process outsourcing, technology, and sales and marketing.

Highorbit was started by Tarun Matta in 2008 as a side project while he was still working with RockeTalk, a multi-platform mobile app. He left RockeTalk in 2010 to focus on the portal full time. An IIM Indore alumnus, Matta previously worked with Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, CSC, Neilsoft Ltd and ITC Infotech.

The company had raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from One97 Communications, India Venture Partners, Shailesh Vikram Singh, Pallav Nadhani, Abhishek Rungta, Anand Lunia, Sachin Garg and others in March 2012. In November 2016, iimjobs.com secured $2 million (Rs 13 crore then) in its Series A round of funding led by early-stage investment firm India Quotient. Tracxn Labs and Calcutta Angels also participated in this round.

Zomato acquires Poland Gastronauci

Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah as Foodiebay founded Zomato in 2008. Starting with 1200 restaurants in and around Delhi, they quickly expanded to Kolkata, Mumbai, and Pune. In 2010, Info-edge invested $1 Million in the company. In 2010, it rebranded as Zomato to have a brand name that was short and easy to remember.

In the recent news, India based online and mobile restaurant search and discovery services acquired Poland’s leading restaurant service Gastronauci. This was Zomato fourth acquisition in last three months and they have now increased their presence in 16 countries. Ola Lazar founded Gastronauci in 2007. Zomato wants to be Google of food and presently they are in aim of covering Central and Eastern European Market.

Backed by $37 Million it raised from Sequioa Capital and Info-Edge in 2013 it acquired three more firms this year. These include New Zealand based restaurant service MenuMania in July 2014, Czech Republic based restaurant guide Lunchtime.cz, and Slovakia popular restaurant guide Obedovat.sk. Zomato now provides information over 260,000 restaurants across 16 countries. The market it operates includes UK, UAE, South Africa, New Zealand, Philippines, Portugal, Brazil, Chile, Turkey, Indonesia, Srilanka, and Qatar. It also operates across 35 cities in India.

In India, it provides information on over 60,000 restaurants. In the next one year, Zomato plans to enter into nine new markets these includes Canada, Ireland, Malaysia, Vietnam, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, and Colombia. For Zomato the big markets are in US, Germany, Australia, Japan, UK, and Russia. Their competitors in other countries are Yelp, which is present in 28 markets, JustEat, which is present in 13 countries, and Open Table, which has its presence in 20 countries. The primary focuses of these companies are on food ordering and table bookings and they do not aid discovery like Zomato.

Zomato wants to first Internet based Indian brand out to India. The day Zomato did their fourth acquisition, Delhi based Website performance testing startup Wignify acquired US based Concept Feedback, a community platform of user experience experts for online. In the coming days we may see fashion and retail giant Jabong to operate in UK and Printvenue in Australia.