Oyo Hotels acquires Innov8

Oyo Hotels and homes, the world’s third-largest chain of hotels, homes, managed living and workspaces has confirmed its acquisition of Innov8, a co-working spaces provider, highlighting the company’s increasing focus on the fast-growing segment.

Charting out its multi-brand approach to the workspace’s opportunity in India, Oyo introduced three co-working brands under Oyo Workspaces: Innov8, Powerstation and Workflo for upper mid-scale, mid-scale and economy segments, respectively.

 

OYO Workspaces is set to open the door to its more than 21 workspaces, with over 15,000 seats across more than 10 cities in India, it said in a statement. Of these, Innov8 is currently spread across six cities—Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Chandigarh and Mumbai, with 16 centres hosting over 6,000 employees of brands like Swiggy, Paytm, Pepsi, Nykaa, OLX and Lenskart. Powerstation has one centre in Gurugram with over 1,000 seats and Workflo has set up four centres across NCR, Hyderabad and Bengaluru with a hosting capacity of over 1,500 seats in total already.

Oyo pegs co-working spaces to be a $20 billion business opportunity in India by 2020. Oyo’s entry into the workspaces business comes at a time when India is already seeing the emergence of several large companies in this segment, including the likes of WeWork India, CoWrks, Awfis and Smartworks.

Flipkart acquires F1 Info solutions

India’s leading e-commerce marketplace Flipkart has acquired mobile repair chain F1 Info Solutions as it looks to improve its after sales service offerings to customers on its platform.

Smartphones account for over 50 per cent of the sales (by value) on Flipkart, making it the most important category for the Indian e-tailer. With F1 Info Solutions, the company will gain access to its own chain of service centres across the country. F1 Info Solutions will become a part of Jeeves, a firm that Flipkart invested in 2014. Jeeves specializes in providing after-sales service for large and small home appliances and furniture.

Following the acquisition, Flipkart will be able to monetize its customers across the lifecycle of a product, rather than just at the time of sale. According to the company, F1 Info Solutions has 158 centres and these are located in 135 cities across the country. The firm currently employs around 1,000 people who handle around 50,000 service calls every month. F1 Info is also a certified partner for several global consumer technology majors such as Apple, Samsung, HP, Lenovo, Sony and Asus.

The development comes at a time when the ecommerce giant is gearing up to sell refurbished smartphones ahead of Diwali. According to sources, Flipkart-certified refurbished smartphones will soon be sold on the online marketplace and offline outlets. To that end, the company is looking to team up with distributors for offline sale, as part of a move aimed at lowering high return rates of handsets.

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.

Quikr Acquires Stepni

Online classifieds platform Quikr India Pvt. Ltd has acquired Stepni, a Bengaluru based start-up that connects vehicle owners with service providers for an undisclosed amount. Quikr has been driving a verticalization exercise, under which the company is focusing on five key business segments – automobiles, real estate, jobs, services, and customer-to-customer sales.

The acquisition of Stepni is expected to help Quikr strengthen car-related services under the QuikrCars vertical, as well as boost its services business, QuikrServices. Stepni, founded in October 2015, claims to have a network of more than 125 service centres across Bangalore. As a classified portal, Quikr has just one rival, OLX, which is backed by Naspers Ltd, a South African Mass media company.

In car segment, Quikr competes with the likes of Warburg Pincus backed CarTrade, which has so far raised at least $185 Million from investors, and CarDekho, which has raised at least $90 Million from Sequoia Capital and Google Capital. The real estate segment has businesses such as Housing, Magicbricks, PropTiger and others. Similarly, the Hyperlocal services segment has deep pocketed start-ups such as Housejoy and UrbanClap, while in the jobs category, the likes of Babajob and Aassan Jobs compete with Quikr.

Quikr is growing beyond a listing platform to a one-stop shop for used goods by enabling payments on its platform, as well as facilitating logistics, a move likely to throw open additional revenue channels at a time when a slowdown in external funding is prompting start-ups to reduce cash burn and focus on profitability. The company has been investing aggressively to build the five verticals by both acquiring companies and making strategic investments.

Quikr acquires Hiree

Online classified company Quikr India Pvt. Ltd has acquired Bengaluru based online recruitment platform Hiree (Abhiman Technologies Pvt. Ltd) for an undisclosed amount in an attempt to bolster its job listings business, Quikr Jobs.

Following the acquisition, Hiree will merge with Quikr and the Hiree team will be adsorbed into Quikr. The combined entity will have more than 4 Million active jobseekers. Hiree was founded in May 2013 and connected potential jobseekers serving notice periods with prospective employers in an attempt to fast track the recruitment process by enlisting active jobseekers.

In May 2015, the company rebranded itself as Hiree and allowed listings by all categories of jobseekers in an attempt to increase its target audience. The company had raised INR 20 crore from IDG Ventures and a clutch of angel investors. However, the company had a bumpy ride as overall hiring, especially by startups, slowed down after startups scaled back to conserve cash and started focusing on streamlining their operations with the existing workforce following a slowdown in investments.

As a classified portal, Quikr has just one rival, OLX, which is backed by Naspers Ltd, a South African mass media company. Tiger Global Management backed Quikr which has so far raised about $346 Million from venture capital firms has been investing aggressively to build these verticals by both acquiring companies and making strategic investments. In May, Quikr acquired Gurgaon based home beauty services provider Salosa for an undisclosed amount to bolster its home services business.

Quikr buys beauty service provider Salosa

Online classified portal Quikr India Pvt. Ltd has acquired on-demand beauty service provider Salosa, owned by Beawel Tech Pvt. Ltd for an undisclosed amount in a move that will help the Tiger Global Management backed company penetrate deeper into the home services segment.

Salosa, founded in September 2015, currently operates in Gurgaon and parts of Delhi with a team of in-house beauticians. The beauty services market is close to $5 Billion in India and growing, which is evident from the increasing number of requests from Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. On demand beauty service is an important sub-category and Salosa will help bring very real benefits to consumers.

Quikr had earlier committed an investment of INR 250 crore to strengthen its home services vertical. QuikrServices has 250,000 service providers who offer more than 80 services for consumers and has about 100,000 daily customers. Quikr is growing beyond a listing platform to a one-stop shop for used goods by enabling payments on its platform, as well as facilitating logistics.

Quikr is focusing on five key business segments such as automobiles, real estate, jobs, services and customer to customer sales. It has identified a new source of revenue and fends off competition from other revenue capital backed businesses that have emerged in each of these categories. As a classified portal, Quikr has just one rival OLX, which is backed by Naspers Ltd, a South African mass media company.

Quikr acquires RealtyCompass

Online classifieds website Quikr India Pvt. Ltd acquired real estate analytics firm Blitzkrieg Technology Pvt. Ltd which operates under the name RealtyCompass for an undisclosed sum. This is the second acquisition by the company in the sector. It acquired Indian Realty Exchange (IRX) an aggregator of real estate agents.

It also made a strategic investment in AN Virtual world Tech Ltd, a hyper-local search engine providing street views. The latest acquisition will help QuikrHomes access technology built by RealtyCompass that helps consumers and investors in their decision making process by providing builder ratings and detailed project analysis. As part of its growth strategy, Quikr has been focusing on automobiles, jobs, services and customer to customer sales.

The size of Real estate sector is expected to reach $853 Billion by 2028 and its contribution to India’s gross domestic product will be 13%. While Quikr competes with Naspers backed OLX in the classified business, its competitors in the real estate sector are Housing.com, PropTiger Realty India Pvt. Ltd, Magicbricks Realty Services Ltd and 99 Acres.

Softbank backed Housing.com which started off as a listing website and now enables users to buy and sell properties online, acquired risk assessment company Realty Business Intelligence for Rs. 10 Crore in cash in June and Indian Real Estate Forum in March. PropTiger also acquired Makaan.com in April. QuikrHomes currently connects customers from more than 1000 cities and towns across India and it helps conclude more than 200,000 transactions a month.

Flipkart and OLX Partnership

With more and more people accessing the internet through smartphones and tablets, the internet user base has grown to be around 243 million. This has led to exciting and booming e-commerce sector in the country. Last week, Flipkart announced that it had raised fresh capital of $1 Billion; soon afterwards, Amazon too announced that it will invest another $2 Billion in India.

In addition, keeping the momentum going, Internet firms Flipkart and OLX are joining hands for one of a kind marketing partnership. The two sites will launch a joint campaign ‘urging’ consumers to upgrade by selling used products on OLX before buying the new products on Flipkart. OLX was founded in 2006 and is owned by South African Internet Company Naspers, which is an investor in Flipkart. OLX is a marketplace for used goods, while Flipkart sells only new goods. The campaign will be on for a month, and will include several categories within electronics.

With this partnership with OLX, it will be able to provide an end-to-end solution to customers especially in electronics categories where selling old products is an integral part of the buying process. Earlier this year OLX competitor Quickr, had collaborated with Amazon owned Junglee, a price comparison portal. Through this Junglee, users could compare prices of new products across online shopping sites and find locally available pre-owned products listed on Quickr.com.

The first phase of the tie-up will be kicked off with a joint marketing campaign using consumers to upgrade by selling their used products on OLX.in before buying the new products on Flipkart. The Idea of this tie-up was conceived keeping in mind the strong and independent position of OLX and Flipkart in their respective market space. The rationale for the number one online classifieds platform and the leading e-commerce platform coming together for a marketing campaign is a seamless one. With so much funds and collaborations Flipkart is reviving their business model and in no time Flipkart will be India’s largest Online seller and they can beat Amazon in selling products online.