Shopping search engine Buyt raises $1M from digital media firm ValueFirst

Delhi-based Rocket Science Technologies LLP, which owns and operates the product and price comparison portal , has raised $1 million from Delhi-based digital marketing firm ValueFirst Digital Media Pvt Ltd. As part of the investment, ValueFirst CEO Vishwadeep Bajaj will join the board of the company.

The funds will be primarily used for expanding operations in the Middle East and South-east Asia by the end of this year, and for hiring a sales and marketing team in those regions. The company also plans to revamp its site by the end of August and will build mobile applications.

"Besides the funding, ValueFirst also brings its marketing expertise for our team, which will work in our favour since we have spent zero on marketing till now. They will be our strategic partner and will look after our marketing operations and implementations," said Simran Jit Singh, founding director and head of strategy & business development at Buyt.

The startup was founded in August 2012 by IIT alumni Singh, Biswanath Patel and Yogesh Tomar. While Singh and Tomar were batchmates at IIT Delhi and specialised in Computer Science, Patel holds a Computer Science degree from IIT Bombay. Sunil Jain, former business head of Siemens India, has also joined the team recently. Apart from Delhi, the company has an office in Mumbai as well and currently has a team of 12 people.

Buyt enables shoppers to search and compare product prices from 100 e-commerce portals. The platform covers several product categories such as mobiles, televisions, apparel, shoes, cosmetics and much more. When you select a product, you will get side-by-side comparison of latest prices, shipping terms and product features from multiple e-commerce portals. One can also filter results by manufacturer, pricing and features. The company is now looking to add 100 new retailers (for product and price comparison), as well as coupons and offers. It will also add a 'wishlist' section, enabling users to add products to the wishlist and get intimation on their availability.

Other key players in this space include Mysmartprice.com, Mypriceindia.com, Pricedekho.com, Findyogi.com, Pricebaba.com and Wicfy.com, but the most prominent one is e-commerce giant Amazon's Junglee.com.

As for funding, Pricababa.com, a location-based price search engine for mobile phones, securedan undisclosed amount in seed investment from a group of investors.

Pune-based Simplibuy Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs Wicfy.com, also raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Silicon Valley-based seed-stage investment firm Ecosystem Ventures.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)