Snapdeal acquires fashion products discovery platform Doozton

Delhi-based Jasper Infotech Pvt Ltd, which runs the online marketplaceSnapdeal.com, has acquired Doozton.com, a curated and socially-nurtured fashion shop that offers hand-picked fashion-finds and seeks to help people make better shopping decisions and discover fitting apparel. The details of the transaction are not disclosed.

Doozton's technology will enable personalised way of listing and suggesting fashion merchandise on Snapdeal.

"In a short span of time since its inception, Doozton.com has earned popularity amongst its users, making shopping fun, easy and social with the best of fashion & lifestyle product suggestions including clothes, shoes and accessories for men and women," said Rohit Bansal, co-founder and COO of Snapdeal. "At Snapdeal, we have seen a 10x growth in our fashion categories in the last 12 months, and we foresee the benefits of this acquisition will further boost this growth," he added.

Doozton was founded in March last year by IIT Roorkee alumnus Pushpendra Singh. Using Doozton, people can find top shopping trends, get inspired from friends and community trend-setters and get to know what to wear and where to shop. The portal promises to bring a new approach to online shopping that is based on various occasions such as parties and weddings, instead of the conventional way of listing clothes based on various categories such as men/women and shirts/pants, etc. In a way, Doozton takes the concept of personal stylists and handpicked clothes online to make the product discovery easy.

"With Snapdeal.com, the technology of Doozton.com will get a wider and more established platform. This acquisition will allow for a much larger canvas for our mission of enabling intuitive and fun merchandising of fashion products," said Singh.

Snapdeal is one of the leading e-commerce companies in India. Last May, the company had acquiredSequoia Capital-backed Shopo.in for an undisclosed amount. A year earlier, it had bought online sports goods retailer Esportsbuy.com.

In February this year, Snapdeal had raised $133.77 million (Rs 830 crore) led by existing investor eBay Inc with participation from other existing investors, in the third-biggest funding round in an Indian tech firm.

Around the same time, Snapdeal announced its foray into services commerce and launched an education marketplace on its portal, which enables consumers to access a wide range of test preparation material, certificate courses, classroom training and online courses.

This deal, which will boost the apparel vertical within Snapdeal, comes at a time when its key Indian rival Flipkart is in the process of gulping Myntra, arguably the top fashion e-tailer in the country.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)