Online payment platform and e-commerce firm Paytm has acquired Gurgaon-based hyper local service provider Near.in to expand its business to offline operations.
Founded by IIT-ian Sunil Goyal, and Lomesh Dutta and Akshay Khanna from Delhi College of Engineering (DCE), Near.in, an online-to-offline (O2O) startup, provides services like home repairs, appliance repair and pest control.
It also helps customers to find music classes, yoga facilities and other services.
Paytm is paying $2 million for the acquisition. The entire Near.in team will be absorbed by Paytm.
"Online-to-offline is a key focus area for Paytm and Near.in seemed a perfect fit for us, which has a credible team. While funds are not easily coming to a lot of companies, making the right purchase is crucial," Kiran Vasireddy, Paytm's senior vice-president and head of investments, told a daily newspaper.
The company, which received $680 million in funding commitments from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is looking to acquire a couple of more startups.
Near.in had raised around Rs 2 crore in seed funding from serial entrepreneurs like Anupam Mittal of Shaadi.com, Manish Vij of adtech firm SVG Media, Prashant Tandon (CEO) and Gaurav Agarwal (CTO) of Healthkart.com, and Akash Agarwal, global vice-president of the mobile division of enterprise software maker SAP Labs.
BW Reporters
The author is Senior Correspondent with BW Businessworld
