LionRock-backed baby & kids products e-tailer Hopscotch acquires SkoolShop

Hit The Mark Inc, which runs Mumbai-based curated baby and kids products flash sales venture Hopscotch, has acquired Occasion Kommerce Pvt Ltd-run online school supplies retailer, SkoolShop for an undisclosed amount. SkoolShop's investors Blume Ventures and angel investors like Rajan Anand will exit the company as a result of this deal.

SkoolShop's site will redirect customers to Hopscotch for a few days before the portal is shut down.

This acquisition will also see a part of the SkoolShop team moving to Hopscotch.

With this acquisition, Hopscotch's co-founder Rahul Anand estimates that his firm will earn revenue of Rs 25 crore (just over $4 million) in FY15.

"We found a lot of synergies between the two companies. The acquisition will help expand our customer base rapidly and also give us a larger vendor base," Anand said.

"Our consumers are the same and it makes sense to offer them the ability to find the best possible products for education and beyond all at one place," added Satya Raghavan, co-founder of Skoolshop who was Anand's classmate at Harvard Business School.

Hopscotch is an online store for baby and kids' brands, including apparel, shoes, toys & books and moms & maternity products. The firm claims that unlike traditional online stores, it introduces new limited-time boutiques every day. Hopscotch also offers a feature called pre-order, which allows users to book select products ahead of time.

About four months ago, Hopscotch had secured $2 million (about Rs12 crore) from Singapore-based LionRock Capital, with participation from a group of individuals, including Nisaba Godrej of Godrej Group, Skype co-founder Toivo Annus and Diapers.com CTO Wei Yan.

On the other hand, SkoolShop.com was founded by Satya Raghavan, Sumant Kasliwal and Anthony Thottungal in October 2011. Apart from retailing products on its site, SkoolShop supplies text books, stationery and other products directly to schools. The company had raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round from Blume Ventures and angel investors, including Sunil Kalra, Srikant Shastri, Vikas Choudhary and Puneet Deora.

Casualties in the space

The online retail industry dedicated to kids' products has seen a lot of consolidation in the recent past. AllSchool-Stuff shut shop last month. Online book store BookAdda acquired school-focused book portal KoolSkool. Kalaari Capital-backed Hushbabies shut down and Hoopos merged with Babyoye. In a similar case, online toystore Wopshop shut down.

Hopscotch competes with two significant VC-backed ventures in the vertical—FirstCry and Babyoye.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)