Quikr has acquired StayGlad, the marketplace for beauty services. The strategic move will further strengthen the market leadership of its beauty service brand, AtHomeDiva, by enabling it to take on even more beauty services requests under its services vertical, QuikrServices.
AtHomeDiva currently offers on-demand, in-home beauty services across six cities including Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Gurgaon and Hyderabad.
Bangalore-based StayGlad was founded in May, 2015 by IIT KGP alumni, Prateek Jain, Shashank Gupta and Kavish Desai. In less than one year of its operations, it does hundreds of orders per day at an average value of 1400/- per transaction. The 100-member team of StayGlad including its founders and stylists will now be a part of AtHomeDiva.
StayGlad is the third in a series of beauty-services startups acquired by QuikrServices. Prior acquisitions include Salosa and ZapLuk that have helped expand AtHomeDiva’s range of beauty services and its reach across cities.
Quikr has acquired Stepni, a platform that connects vehicle owners with service providers nearest to them.
The strategic move strengthens the company’s service offerings under QuikrCars, its vertical that focuses on all types of automobiles including cars, bikes and commercial vehicles. It also opens cross-selling opportunities for QuikrServices, the company’s vertical that provides a range of services to consumers.
Founded by Vinay Singh & Nikhil Nair in October 2015, Stepni claims to have over 125 service centers across Bangalore. Stepni’s founders and team will join QuikrCars with immediate effect.
QuikrCars has over 1.5MM vehicles listed on its platform across India.
Quikr has acquired ZapLuk, a provider of on-demand beauty & wellness services, in a strategic move to scale its growing beauty services brand AtHomeDiva.
Under its services vertical, QuikrServices, Quikr will now offer a full range of on-demand home beauty services to consumers in multiple cities including Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Gurgaon and Hyderabad.
This is Quikr’s second acquisition in the beauty services segment following Salosa to cater to the fast growth of beauty services requests on QuikrServices.
With the acquisition, ZapLuk’s co-founder Lavanya Hariharan and a team of close to 50 stylists and professionals will now be a part of AtHomeDiva. The other co-founders of ZapLuk, Manan Maheshwari, Mahesh Gogineni and CTO Varun MS will be pursuing other business interests.
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AtHomeDivaoffers a full range of in-home beauty and styling services including hair, skin, make-up services and special packages. The services are fulfilled by qualified beauty professionals that have undergone both quality and background checks. On-demand beauty is just one of the 80+ types of services provided by QuikrServices that caters to 100,000+consumers across India every day.
Brand Capital has invested Rs.130 crore in Quikr India via 143,000 fully convertible debentures at Rs.9,038 apiece and one equity share of the same price.
As part of the deal, BCCL will also have to publish ads in its media properties such as ET Now and Times Now channels and The Times of India and The Economic Times newspapers for a predetermined number of years [source].
Quikr has acquired Salosa, an on demand in-home beauty services provider. This strategic acquisition is a part of Quikr’s plan to invest Rs.250 crore in its home services vertical, QuikrServices.
Salosa which has been a partner to QuikrServices will further strengthen its beauty services offerings with stylists that have undergone a rigorous process of quality & background checks along with required training.
In line with Quikr’s verticalization strategy, this investment will enable the company go deeper and faster in key categories under QuikrServices.
Founded by Ex- P&G professionals, Piyush Dhanuka and Anurag Nair, Salosa was launched in September 2015, serving customers in Gurgaon and parts of Delhi. Salosa began first as a marketplace for freelance beauticians and stylists before shifting to a full stack model with an in house team.
Talking about this acquisition, PD Sundar, Head of QuikrServices, said, “Beauty services market is close to $5 billion in India and is growing which is evident from the increasing number of requests we see from Tier-I and Tier-II cities on our platform. On-demand beauty services is an important sub-category and Salosa will help bring very real benefits”.
QuikrServices has 250,000 service providers offering over 80 types of services for consumers and is being used by 1,00,000 customers every day.
Quikr has launched QuikrScanner, a diagnostic app for mobile phones. Enabling consumers to remotely assess and evaluate the condition and quality of mobile phones listed on the platform, QuikrScanner offers consumers a convenient way to make better informed purchase decisions.
Quikr is India’s only marketplace to offer its users such an app, which runs up to 20 tests to evaluate an android phone, including its battery, front and rear camera, network etc. This is an important step as the adoption of the pre-owned mobile phone category is growing rapidly in the country.
“C2C is a strategic category for us and as leaders in this space with over 30 million unique visitors on our platform, we have always strived to build trust and safety in transactions between our buyers and sellers. The QuikrScanner diagnostic app was recently introduced on our Android app, m-site and desktop in order to bring more transparency to transactions of pre-owned mobiles.”
“..already 20% of mobile listings on Quikr have the QuikrScanner report attached,”Anurag Saran, CPO, Quikr
QuikrScanner also comes embedded in Quikr’s mobile app, and sellers who use the Quikr app to post an ad from the phone will be able to seamlessly demonstrate the quality of their phones to prospective buyers. Sellers posting an ad from the mobile site or desktop can also run QuikrScanner by installing it on the phone that they intend to sell.
Okay. Commonfloor has been acquired by Quikr (we told you this last year itself). The two companies took to Twitter to do PDA (public display of affection acquisition)
The deal, from what we know values Commonfloor at $200mn and the company will continue to operate as a stand-alone entity.
Started 7 years back, Commonfloor last raised $12mn from Google Ventures (in total, $63mn) and has launched multiple products – right from VR to visualized market data using GIS.
Commonfloor Founders
Commonfloor recorded a revenue of Rs. 44 crores in FY14-15 (against a loss of Rs 86.2 Crores).
Why Quikr And Commonfloor Need To Live Together?
The merger, which is expected to be completed over the next two to three months, will give CommonFloor.com access to Quikr’s 30 million consumers and harness the potential of the cross category nature of the platform, while QuikrHomes will benefit from CommonFloor’s structured data and domain expertise. The combined force of two entities will create a strong online real estate industry leader, which has the largest inventory and property seeker traffic in the country.
The company will continue to operate both brands in the market and honor the commitment towards their respective customers. Further, given that the two companies have the same technology stack, the CommonFloor.com team will have expanded scope across Quikr’s four other verticals in order to further accelerate its growth
Simply put, Commonfloor gets access to Quikr userbase – which helps it grows faster than the competition.
And for Quikr, they get a ready made home for QuikrHomes property. Quikr last raised $150mn and need to focus on revenue earning properties – so why not start with real estate.
Ofcourse, the common investors include Tiger Global.
“The combined 2 million property listing makes us leaders.” says Pranay, Quikr founder and CEO.
Quikr recently acquired Indian Realty Exchange (IRX), a mobile-first aggregator of real estate broker community and realtycompass, a platform that provides builder rating and project analysis. It also made a strategic investment in A N Virtual Tech, the only company in India that has detailed real life imagery of 90%+ streets and buildings across India’s top 50 cities
The Commonfloor Journey
Watch cofounder, Vikas talk about Commonfloor journey at UnPluggd 2014.
And while a lot of NextBigWhat readers are wondering whether the news is correct or not, Quikr and Commonfloor are making the final announcement today at Quikr’s Bangalore office.
The deal, from what we know values Commonfloor at $200mn (100% equity) and the company will continue to operate as a stand-alone entity.
Plus, one of the Commonfloor founders will get a board set at Quikr.
Commonfloor has in total raised $62mn and generated a revenue of Rs. 44 crores ($7mn) in FY14-15 and will now be part of Quikr’s new focus area, i.e. Quikr Homes.
Quikr has launched vernacular language support for its consumers and will now allow consumers to choose from seven different languages– Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati and Marathi and let them browse as well as post ads.
This new feature will allow consumers to browse, search, post ads and interact with buyers and sellers in their language of choice. Quikr has leveraged various technologies to ensure there is no delay in rendering ads in any of the available languages on the platform.
Pranay Chulet, Founder and CEO, Quikr said, “We are a made in India business that has always focused on what the Indian consumer needs. With Indian internet expanding beyond air-conditioned offices and homes and into the streets of the country, local languages are definitely the next frontier for us. I strongly believe that language should no longer be a barrier for people seeking to transact online and am super excited about the strong response our verticals such as QuikrC2C and QuikrJobs have already received in local languages.”
The company said that it will add more languages to the platform.
Quikr has acquired realtycompass, a real-estate analytics platform which helps end consumers and investors by providing builder ratings and detailed project analysis. Ratings and user recommendations on realtycompass platform are derived from 100+ data points.
Realtycompass was founded by Nimesh Bhandari, Sankara Srinivasan and Alok Mishra in 2013.
Pranay Chulet, Founder and CEO, Quikr said, “Real Estate is a key category for us. We have been keenly developing some innovations that have the potential to reshape the market landscape and the acquisition of realtycompass will help us bring more such solutions to our users. We welcome the realtycompass team to the Quikr family.”
Quikr will continue to invest and develop the realtycompass platform by adding project approvals, social sentiment analysis and user credit score among others.
The company had recently acquired Indian Realty Exchange (IRX), a mobile-first aggregator of real estate agents. Quikr has also made an investment in A N Virtual World Tech, the company that runs hyper-local search engine.
The company also recently acquired seven year old Commonfloor for an amount close to $200mn.
QuikrHomes claims that it currently connects customers from over 1000 cities and towns across India and it helps conclude 2 lakh plus transactions per month.
Category classifieds portal Quikr, has announced its foray into the entertainment industry by signing an MOU with renowned film industry veterans. As per the MOU, a combined entity fill be formed to build a ‘unique’ platform for Actors, Casting Professionals, Directors, Producers, and other professionals in the film industry.
Quikr has also partnered with Film Maker Vivek Bohra and Casting Director, Aadore Mukherjee to help build the new platform
It will bring together actors, casting directors and production houses to help meet the unique needs of India’s burgeoning entertainment industry, said Quikr in a statement.
“The whole Quikr journey started seven years ago when I was busy making a film in the US. While making the film, I used Craigslist to recruit 50+ cast and crew members in the US, but for the scenes to be shot in India, I realised India had no such platform I could use. So in some ways, life has come full circle for us – Entertainment has always been one of the key categories on Quikr and we are now excited to take things to the next level. Both our partners Vivek Bohra and Aadore Mukherjee live and breathe films, and we are excited to partner with them to infuse the passion of film crazy India with our experience in building digital marketplaces”, said Pranay Chulet, Founder & CEO Quikr.
Quikr’s has partnered with several entities to build similar platforms and services previously, take a look at them below:
Quikr has acquired Indian Realty Exchange (IRX) for an undisclosed amount.
IRX is a mobile first aggregator of real estate agents which tags agents with projects and locations in real time.
The acquisition was made to strengthen Quikr’s newly launched platform QuikrHomes which provides information about real estate marketplace and strengthens engagement with broker community. [source].
Quikr has launched QuikrServices with a special focus on the unorganized sector of service providers across the country.
Quikr’s new vertical provides access to reliable service providers across sub-categories such as home, travel, financial, health, fitness, beauty and event services.
QuikrServices addresses customer needs by bridging the gap between the offline local home services ecosystem and online demand for the same.
QuikrServices is piloting several features to help bring more transparency and allow consumers to opt for the best service providers in their region.
Quikr is in advanced talks to acquire realty portal CommonFloor. The transaction is expected to close at around $160 million.
Tiger Global an existing investor in both Quikr and CommonFloor is expected to put fresh capital into Quikr through primary issuance of shares.
Existing investors in CommonFloor are Google Capital and Accel Partners, who will collectively get 10% stake in Quikr (source).
Founded in 2007, CommonFloor had raised roughly around $60 million (last round from Google Ventures). Quikr has in all raised $350 million in investments.
Online classifieds company Quikr has launched a dedicated job search vertical that allows users to search for full-time, freelancing and other employment-related opportunities.
The company has built up its classifieds offering across several verticals over the past couple of years and is now looking to diversify and better serve some of the larger categories.
Pranay Chulet, founder and CEO of Quikr, recently divulged on the details that the company was looking to launch dedicated verticals for jobs, cars and real estate but did not share a timeline.
He said that Quikr is also doing things such as launching reports about used cars and getting users that list properties to upload more images, essentially making things easier for consumers.
Quikr recently also launched its ‘Buy Through Quikr’ option, where the company will handle payments, delivery and even offer assurances on products bought from its platform.
Quikr is all set for its launch of new service business QuikrServices. With the launch of QuikrServices the company plans to expand its business in the service category.
The company has announced P.D. Sundar as head of the QuikrServices. He was the former Head of Internet Channels at CitiBank and has also headed the Digital business at The Hindu.
P.D Sundar will be responsible for further extending Quikr’s leadership by verticalizing its product as well as marketing and revenue generation for this category.
“More and more consumers are using Quikr to find stuff ranging from retail services such as hobby classes and electronics repair to household service providers such as maids, cooks, drivers, plumbers and movers. We are excited to have an experienced business builder like Sundar lead our charge in this category,” says Pranay Chulet, Founder & CEO, Quikr.
P. D Sundar, an IIT-IIM graduate, has 15 years of experience in the internet industry in India. Prior to the leading positions at CitiBank and The Hindu, Sundar headed the overall India classifieds business at Sulekha across categories such as real estate, cars & bikes and used goods.
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