Way2online Acquires 160by2

Way2online Interactive India Private Limited (Way2Online), a consumer focused Internet technology company has announced today that it has acquired 160by2, a person-to-person (P2P) Messaging portal from Hyderabad-based SMSCountry.

As part of the deal, Way2online has acquired SMSCountry's Internet asset160by2.com and the key engineering team and intellectual property associated with 160by2.com. Post-acquisition, 160by2 will continue to grow as an independent unit under the leadership of way2online.

Way2online operates one of India's largest P2P messaging portal way2sms.com that claims a registered user base of 23 million people. 160by2.com claims it has over 13 million registered users and the site generates close to 75 million page views and it is adding 10,000 new users every day.

According to Way2online, there is only 20 per cent overlap between the two sites which means just about 2.6 million users are common and thereby Way2online will get access to a set of additional 10.4 million users as part of the deal. With the acquisition, Way2online is now targeting a turnover of Rs 60 crore during 2012-13.

Raju Vanapala, founder and CEO of Way2online, said "This acquisition not only broadens Way2online's consumer penetration to 33 million unique Internet users but also gives access to 35 per cent of the total Internet users in India. Above all, both the Internet properties way2sms and 160by2 are adding close to a million new users per month."

Launched in Dec 2006, one of Way2online's flagship product way2sms.com helps users to send free SMS to any mobile in the country. Way2sms generates nearly 400 million page views every month according to comScore and has delivered over 10 billion messages since its inception. The free of cost mobile messaging site way2sms was also among the top 10 searches on Google (India) in 2011.

SMSCountry is almost a decade long venture co-founded by Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti and Raju Kalluri. Yerramsetti who serves as the CEO of the firm had earlier started an online examination portal A2Zexams. He then managed the Indian Operations of a UK based calling card company, Ekspertek.

Kalluri who is the director (Technology) at the firm is involved in the firm's technology strategy and product development in the areas of Internet and mobile communications. Prior to SMSCountry, he worked with Taruni Technovision and was instrumental in developing the Short Messaging Server software which was leased out to TATA Cellular (now Idea Cellular). He also worked with a couple of technology companies in the IVR, email and fax space.