Quikr acquires Babajob to expand its position in blue collar jobs

Online classifieds portal Quikr India Pvt. Ltd has acquired job listing company Babajob Services Pvt. Ltd in an attempt to strengthen its position in the blue collar jobs segment.

“This will combine the two largest Indian aspiring job players—Babajob and QuikrJobs—into one entity, a tool to help everyone in India get a better job. The Babajob board, Vir (Vir Kashyap, co-founder and chief operating officer) and I decided that joining forces with Quikr represented our best option for scaling Babajob’s mission—providing better jobs for everyone by helping employers digitally hire aspiring workers,” Sean Blagsvedt, co-founder and chief executive officer at Babajob, said in an email.

Blagsvedt said that QuikrJobs, the classifieds company’s job listing service, is already profitable and the combined entity of Babajob and QuikrJobs will become the largest platform for blue collar job seekers.

The companies did not divulge details of the deal. Blagsvedt and Kashyap will quit the company following the acquisition.

Babajob will continue to operate as a separate entity, said a Quikr spokesperson.


Babajob, founded in 2007 by Blagsvedt, Kashyap and Ira Weise, has raised at least $10 million in multiple funding rounds. Its investors include SEEK Ltd, a global online employment company, GrayGhost Ventures and Khosla Impact. According to Blagsvedt, 8.5 million verified job seekers sought jobs from more than five lakh employers on Babajob.

“We innovated and scaled telephony, chat and mobile solutions to connect multilingual job seekers and employers. We defined a category and perhaps most importantly, showed the market that there was a need and business opportunity to build a job site for everyone, even those with little education, knowledge of computers or command of English,” Blagsvedt said in the email.

Babajob’s nearest competitor, Asaanjobs Pvt. Ltd, has raised about $6.5 million from Aspada Advisors, Inventus Capital and IDG ventures. The online recruitment sector also witnessed some closures with companies such as TalentPad and WhistleTalk shutting shop, citing lack of scalability.

For Quikr, which has been on an acquisition spree in the last 18 months, this is the second acquisition in the jobs segment. In July last year, the company had acquired IDG Ventures-backed online job listing platform Hiree (Abhiman Technologies Pvt. Ltd) for an undisclosed amount.

Over the past two years, Quikr has been diversifying into new businesses to boost sales. The company is pushing into five new business segments—automobiles, real estate, jobs, services and customer-to-customer sales.

Having raised about $346 million from Kinnevik AB, Tiger Global, Steadview Capital Management, Matrix Partners India and others since inception in 2008, Quikr has been an active buyer of smaller rivals, especially in the real estate and home services segments, as it looks to bolster fledgling revenues.

Since January last year, Quikr has bought nine companies: Commonfloor, its most expensive purchase yet for about $120 million and Grabhouse in the real estate segment; Stayglad, Zapluk, Salosa and Zimmber in beauty and home services segment; Babajob and Hiree in online recruitment; and Stepni in the automobile segment.

Housing Development Finance Corp. Ltd (HDFC) is in talks with Quikr to sell its brokerage business HDFC Realty and its digital business HDFC Red in an all-stock deal for about Rs350-400 crore, Mint reported on 27 April.

Quikr clocked net sales of Rs41 crore in the year ended 31 March 2016, against Rs25 crore the year before. Its loss surged to Rs534 crore from Rs450 crore in the same period, according to regulatory filings.

Originally Posted in Livemint

Quikr snaps up StayGlad, third buy in beauty space

Online classifieds firm Quikr has acquired StayGlad, an online beauty services startup founded in 2015 and which had received funding from Delhi very founder Sahil Barua and Tracxn Labs. The deal size was not disclosed. This is Quikr's fifth acquisition in five months and three of these were in on-demand beauty services.

Quikr has been on an acquisition spree since May when it acquired beauty services player Salosa to ramp up its QuikrServices platform. It then branded the services as At HomeDiva in July . The company has since acquired beauty startup Zapluk, in August, and now StayGlad. AtHomeDiva currently offers on-demand, in-home beauty services across six cities, including Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Gurugram and Hyderabad.

The Bengaluru-based Quikr, which is valued at $1.2 billion, also acquired hiring platform Hiree in July and vehicle maintenance startup Stepni early this month. In January, it had acquired real estate portal Commonfloor for $100 million.

PD Sundar, head of QuikrServices, said, "On-demand beauty is one of our fastest growing service categories. With well more than half of our consumers coming back to us with bigger ticket sizes, the demand is strong. We want to continue ensuring that we maintain the high standards of quality."

He said StayGlad had a high 70% customer repeat rate. StayGlad was founded by IIT-Kharagpur alumni Prateek Jain, Shashank Gupta and Kavish Desai.It offers more than 100 types of services. It does hundreds of orders every day at an average value of Rs 1,400 per transaction.

Courtesy : Techgig

Apigee officially acquired by Google

Apigee has revealed that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google after last week's news that the search company was planning to acquire it for its cloud based software.

Google will purchase the company for $17.40 per share in cash with the total value of the deal amounting to $625 million. The acquisition will be subject to Apigee stockholder and regulatory approval. Apigee and Google expect the deal to come to a close by the end of 2016.

Diane Greene, SVP of Google's cloud business was eager to welcome Apigee and its employees, saying: “We’re excited about adding Apigee to Google, companies are moving beyond the traditional ways of communicating like phone calls and visits and instead are communicating programmatically through APIs.”

“APIs allow the company’s backend services to talk to the mobile and web-based apps used by their customers and partners. Instead of the doctor phoning a prescription into the pharmacy, they can use an app that talks to the pharmacy through an API. Apigee easily enables this by providing a comprehensive API platform that supports secure, stable, multi-language, dev, test, publish and analytics capabilities.”

Chet Kapoor, Apigee's CEO shared his enthusiasm regarding what the company will be able to accomplish with Google's vast resources: “We've entered a new era of cloud computing, where enterprises are increasingly running business-critical applications in the cloud – and across multiple clouds. Google is the open cloud provider committed to delivering new software for not only hybrid-cloud environments, but also for the multi-cloud world."

“With their history of innovation in web and mobile technologies, we believe Google is the partner for companies embarking on digital transformation. We look forward to being able to accelerate our mission to connect the world through APIs as part of the Google team.”  

Courtesy : ITProportal.com

Verizon has acquired smart lighting startup Sensity Systems

Verizon Communications Inc. has acquired smart lighting startup Sensity Systems Inc. for an undisclosed sum.

Founded in 2010, Sensity offers a high-speed, sensor-based, multiservice, open networking platform known as a Light Sensory Network (LSN) that is designed to help lighting owners improve lighting control and energy efficiency, as well as delivering business processes that go well beyond lighting.

The company’s platform embeds networking technology in both new and retrofitted LED lighting systems that can not only improve energy efficiency and cost savings, but can assist in services including public safety, parking control, asset management, and retail analytics through the platform’s ability to support sensors, cameras, and thermometers.

Sensity has currently rolled out 42 smart city installations across the globe working with partners including Cisco Systems Inc., Qualcomm Inc., Panasonic and others; the company’s clients include Fortune 500 businesses, commercial and industrial property owners, retail facilities, municipal and regional agencies, universities, school districts, hospitals, transportation authorities, warehousing and distribution facilities, and horticulture operations.

Verizon plans to add Sensity to its ThingSpace Internet of Things (IoT) business, a platform it launched in 2015 that serves as a place for developers to create apps, for end users to better manage their devices, and for partners to market their services; in particular Sensity will operate alongside Verizon’s Smart Communities organization that currently offers connected-intelligent solutions the covering parking, lighting, traffic management and security.

“Sensity is a leading provider of IoT solutions for smart communities with a strong ecosystem of partners, and this transaction will accelerate the deployment of large-scale implementations that will drive the digital transformation of cities, universities and venues,” Verizon Vice President – Enterprise Products and IoT Mike Lanman said in a statement. “Verizon is uniquely positioned through its infrastructure investments at the network, platform and application levels to provide holistic solutions that empower communities to address their most pervasive challenges.”

Smart buy

The acquisition of Sensity can best be described as a smart buy by Verizon as the Sunnyvale-based startup not only provides a strong foot in the door to smart commercial lighting but is also a highly complimentary fit to Verizon’s quickly growing IoT business.
Prior to acquisition, Sensify had raised $74 million over three rounds from investors including, Acuity Brands, Almaz, Cisco Investments, GE Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Jonathan Feiber, Simon Venture Group and Trinity Capital Investment.
The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Courtesy : Siliconangle