CommonFloor acqui-hires social app for college campuses Bakfy

Bangalore-based maxHeap Technologies Pvt Ltd, the company behind the real estate and apartment management portal CommonFloor.com, has acqui-hired Bakfy, a hyper local Twitter-like social app for college campuses, from city-based Nativebeta Pvt Ltd in a cash-cum-equity deal.

As per the agreement, Bakfy team will join CommonFloor as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIRs), and will work closely with its founders to build products at the intersection of social and mobile.

It is not immediately clear if Bakfy will continue as an independent property.

One-year-old Bakfy was started by National Institute of Technology (Trichy) graduates Niranjan Bala and Rajesh Eswarlal, along with Ashutosh Garg, an alumnus of Delhi College of Engineering.

Bakfy is a mobile app that connects different college campus. It acts as a local Twitter for campuses where students can chit-chat about the daily happenings in their campuses or on any other topics. Bakfy puts the entire college under one roof, without any friend requests.

It also connects disconnected colleges by providing an option to post to other college campuses.

Students can also post anonymously and share stuff, which they can't do on Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. Typical use cases are gossip about day-to-day stuff, information sharing, college events/fests, jobs/internships, share secrets/feelings, share exam notes, etc.

Bakfy is live in over 50 colleges across India.

The startup was backed by Yogender Chhibber of Zinnov Management Consulting.

"Bakfy chose to be acquired by CommonFloor because of the opportunity in the real estate space is immense. Having done a similar app themselves called Ugal Do, they could relate to what we were trying to do," said Garg.

Founded in 2007 by Sumit Jain, Lalit Mangal and Vikas Malpani, CommonFloor combines property search, apartment management and vendor management. It also facilitates interactions within an apartment community (on the 'common floor' platform) and connects people to relevant service providers.

Last September, the firm had secured $30 million (Rs 181 crore) in Series E round of funding from existing investor Tiger Global Management.

"CommonFloor is quite bullish on mobile, and Bakfy team brings a proven capability of scaling up a mobile-only social network in India. Bakfy is one of the best designed and developed Indian mobile apps in the early-stage segment," said Jain.