Flipkart is acquiring it’s comptetitor Letsbuy.com. The financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed, however it is expected to be around $25-30Mn, according to Medianama.
Letsbuy.com claims to be the second largest player in the Indian e-com space after Flipkart. Flipkart recently raised $150Mn funding valuing the company at $850Mn, while Letsbuy.com is being valued at $25Mn. Is it due the existence of common investors in both the companies. Both the companies have common investors in Tiger Global and Accel Partners.
Launched in 2009 by Hitesh Dhingra and Amanpreet Bajaj, LetsBuy.com is an online retailer of consumer electronics, communications and computer goods from the leading brands in the categories and has a national footprint. It raised $6Mn venture capital funding from Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Tiger Global in January last year.
The company was trying to raise funds last year, but there has not been any development on the deal.
Flipkart, which started as an online retailer of books in 2007, has slowly diversified into mobiles, cameras, movies and music CD/DVDs and electronic goods. It has offices in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata. Flipkart is present in 12 categories and plans to add more products. It has more than 2 million registered users and sale of 30000 items a day. Flipkart recently raised $150Mn from existing investors – Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management Llc in it’s fourth round of funding. Before the latest round of funding, Flipkart raised raised $20Mn in June 2011 and $10 Mn in 2010 from Tiger Global, while Accel Partners had invested in the company in late 2009. Collectively the company has raised a total of almost $31 Mn in three rounds of funding. In October last year, Flipkart was also talking with Carlyle Group and General Atlantic to raise upto $200Mn by divesting a minority stake in the company, however the deal didnt fructify due to differences in valuation between Flipkart and the investors. The company has been expanding through acquisitions as well. Last October, it acquired Mumbai based Mime360, a digital content platform founded by Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari, while in Dec 2010, Flipkart acquired social book discovery tool weRead.com from Lulu Enterprises, Inc, a US-based on-demand publishing firm.
