Flipkart equips customers with enhanced decision-making tools with weRead acquisition

weRead, the increasingly popular, social book recommendation portal, boasts of over 3 million
readers and 60 million books
Buyers on Flipkart can now make informed decisions based on recommendations from people
within their social network, detailed reviews and user-generated ratings.
Flipkart, Indias largest online bookstore and a leading player under Indias e-commerce
firmament today announced that it has acquired weRead.com, the largest social
network based book recommendation and review platform. The weRead acquisition
allows Flipkart to leverage advanced recommendation technologies and social graph
information to enhance customer experience.
With more than 3 million readers and 60 million books, weRead captures user-
generated information such as who, within your social network, has marked a book as a
favourite, detailed reviews and user ratings of books. The weRead application is
available across all popular social network sites such as Facebook, Orkut, Yahoo,
MySpace and Hi5. Considering that purchase of books, as a category, is driven by
reviews and recommendations, weRead provides an edge as it would immediately
showcase community verdicts on any book. The weRead component will make buying
online at Flipkart a heightened social experience. Owing to its community-driven,
independent nature, weRead will retain its own brand identity, even after the purchase
by Flipkart.
According to Sachin Bansal, CEO, Flipkart, This is one more step in our journey to
provide the best possible service experience to our customers. Acquiring weRead will
take our relationship with our customers to a wider plane where we will be their partner
in the entire book reading experience right from purchase to referrals. This would
enable us to suggest the most relevant books to our readers based on their previous
purchase patterns as well as the kind of books they and their friends like. At Flipkart, all
our growth till now has been organic in nature. However, to deliver the best in class
service to our customers, we have started to look at acquisitions that will complement
our current service offerings. weRead is one such step in this direction.
According to the spokesperson at weRead, Lulu is pleased to have completed the
successful sale of weRead.com to Flipkart. We believe weRead users will be well
served by the team at Flipkart.
About Flipkart:Clocking sales of more than 1 million items so far and currently speeding
along at the rate of more than a book sold every minute, Bangalore based Flipkart.com
is the largest online book store and a leading name under the e-commerce firmament in
India. The company was started in 2007 by former classmates at IIT Delhi and later
colleagues at Amazon.com, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. Flipkart has been funded
by Accel India. As part of their expansion plans in the e-commerce space, Flipkart
recently announced the launch of 4 new product categories, i.e. Movies, Music, Games
and Mobiles. Flipkart also offers Cash on Delivery, making it possible for anyone
across the country with internet access to shop online for books and other products.
Currently Flipkart has over 7 million titles (books) listed ranging across all categories. It
has grown ten times over the last one year and aims to touch the Rs 100 crore mark by
March 2011.
Flipkart has a team of more than 300 members and currently operates from offices in
Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. Please visit www.flipkart.com to know more.
About weRead:
weRead.com is the largest social network based book recommendation and review
platform with over 3 million readers and 60 million book titles. weRead enables its
member readers to list, rate and write reviews about the books they are reading or have
read in the past and share reviews about those on their favourite social networks like
Facebook, Orkut, Yahoo, MySpace and Hi5, thereby creating an ever evolving
repository of information about books.
weRead was set up in 2007 by Ugenie, a start-up based out of Bangalore. Ugenie was
then acquired by the US based on-demand publishing company, Lulu.com. Please visit
www.weRead.com to know more.











One of the Indias leading e-commerce retailer, Flipkart.com today announced its
acquisition of digital media distribution firm, MIME360 (Manoramic International Media
Exchange). With this acquisition, Flipkart will be able to utilise the advanced
infrastructure of MIME360 for providing access to a large selection of downloadable
digital content which it will soon introduce.
Speaking about the acquisition, Binny Bansal, COO & Co-founder, Flipkart.com said,
We are happy to bring on board the expertise of team MIME360. As we
enter digital distribution by launching digital downloads on Flipkart,
MIME360s existing infrastructure around digital music will help us gain good foothold in
this domain. We are confident that this move will further strengthen our focus on
providing our customers the very best in every category.
MIME360 was incubated at the Wharton Business Schools Venture Initiation Program
(VIP) by Sameer Nigam in 2008. In early 2009 Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer joined
as co-founders to incorporate MIME360. The unique distribution model brings together
content owners and publishers on a common platform, enabling them to expand their
market globally. The company works at addressing issues associated with scale,
security and transparency that limit global distribution of digital media & entertainment
content.
Speaking more on the acquisition, Sameer Nigam, Founder & CEO, MIME360 said
Weve always believed that a keen focus on customer satisfaction combined with a
strong technology team can drive true market innovation. In Flipkart weve found a
company that has adopted the same core values to achieve great success. By joining
them, we now have a great opportunity to deliver exciting media products and services
directly to end consumers in ways that we were unable to previously.
At present, MIME360 has tie-ups with 50 content owners and 10 content publishers and
currently has operations in Mumbai, India and Delaware, USA. Post the acquisition, the
MIME360 distribution platform will stay totally independent and continue to service
publisher clientele like Gaana.com, Saregama.com and In.com.

Flipkart.com has struck another deal in India Chakpak.com, a Bollywood news
site that offers updates, news, photos and videos.
Techcircle.in first reported that Flipkart was in talks to acquire Chakpak.com. Incidentally,
both Chakpak.com and Flipkart.com are backed by international venture capital firm Accel
Partners.
Although repeated attempts to contact the founders of Flipkart did not elicit any response
till the time of posting this article, Alootechie has confirmed from Flipkart that the firm has
bought the rights to Chakpak.coms digital catalogue. It quotes Sachin Bansal, CEO and co-
founder of Flipkart.com as saying that it is part of his digital strategy.
Flipkart had previously book recommendation engine WeRead by Lulu and digital music firm
Mallers, Inc.
Chakpak was founded in 2007 by Gaurav Singh Kushwaha and Nitin Rajput in Bangalore. It
had five million unique visitors per month as of 2008 but not much has been heard from it
since. In fact, there have been no updates on its Twitter handle and Facebook page since
June 2011. The site is being monetised through advertising but plans to add more revenue
streams through merchandising and paid downloads of movies do not appear to have
taken off. Chakpak competes with various other Bollywood portals such as Bollywood
Hungama by Hungama Digital Entertainment, Santabanta.com, Galatta.com, IBN Lives
movie channel (previously Buzz18), E24Bollywood and MyPopKorn by Digital Media
Convergence Ltd.
Flipkart is one of Indias fastest growing e-commerce sites, selling books, handsets,
consumer electronics, movie DVDs, etc. After raising a total of $31 million so far from Tiger
Global Management LLC and Accel Partners, the company is now looking to acquire firms to
complement its current service offerings. It is also raising between $150 million and $200
million from private equity firms Carlyle and General Atlantic, according to a Reuters report.
Flipkart expects to cross $100 million in revenue this year.



"This acquisition opportunity came at a very attractive price for us and the timing has also been
ideal," Flipkart's cofounder and chief executive officer Sachin Bansal was quoted as saying in a
statement. Letsbuy, a seller of consumer electronic goods, has been struggling to raise additional
money and was left with little option but to do a deal with Flipkart, a manager at a private equity
firm said.
Tiger Global and Accel Partners are both investors in Letsbuy and Flipkart.
"Investors push for such acquisitions as it makes strategic sense for them," said Raja Lahiri, a partner at
Grant Thornton.
Online retailers are racing to consolidate their gains as they prepare for the entry of global competition
once the government approves foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail. Last week, the world largest
e-commerce player, Amazon, made a quiet entry into India through comparison shopping site
junglee.com, which it owns. Amazon insists that Junglee is not a trading platform but Indian online
retailers believe the writing on the wall is clear.
"Amazon's entry means bigger competition and hence large Indian players will look at strategic
opportunities to grow the scale and size of business," said Lahiri.
The online retail industry appears to be coalescing into two distinct types: one that comprises large
multibrand retailers and another consisting of specialised sellers of high-margins products such as
jewellery and fashion apparel. The successful fundraising by Myntra, a fashion retailer, is an indicator of
this trend.
Tiger Global led the round for Myntra with existing investors IndoUS Venture Partners, IDG Ventures
India and Accel Partners participating. Myntra has raised a total of $38 million in four rounds, said founder
Mukesh Bansal.
Flipkart has announced raising $31 million so far and is believed to be in talks to raise $100-$150 million
as it looks to scale rapidly.
"Smaller companies will find it difficult to raise funds unless they have something new to offer," said
Sudhir Sethi, a technology investor who is the chairman of IDG Ventures.