CarDekho acquires price comparison portal BuyingIQ

Jaipur-based Girnar Software Pvt Ltd, the company behind auto portal CarDekho and BikeDekho besides and price comparison and product discovery engine PriceDekho, has acquired Delhi-based cross-product price comparison portal BuyingIQ.com for an undisclosed amount.

This is CarDekho's second acquisition within a year. Last September it acquired Naspers Group-owned Gaadi.com.

Founded in 2012 by IIT graduate Piyush Taneja and BITS Pilani graduate Saumitra Purohit, who were later joined by Avinash Kumar (ex-Booz & Co.), BuyingIQ is run by BuyingIQ Online Services Pvt. Ltd.

BuyingIQ will continue to operate as an independent portal and the founders will take up larger roles within Girnar Software. Taneja and Purohit will take up leadership positions in the product and technology teams, while Kumar will drive select strategic initiatives within the company.

With his acquisition, CarDekho aims to capitalise on the data analytics capabilities of BuyingIQ. Its scoring system analyses millions of curated product reviews crawled from all over the internet.

Based on the score, it tells a user whether to buy a product or skip it. Users can also compare prices from online stores, read quality reviews from its tech community, get product recommendations and set product/price alerts.

"CarDekho's similar vision and a very product-centric approach is something that we found inspiring. Their success in the auto classifieds market has been unprecedented, and we are excited to be a part of this team," said Piyush Taneja, founder & CEO, BuyingIQ.

The company claims that it serves over 1.2 million users every month via its website and Android app.

Focused on electronics, it has tied up with e-commerce majors including Flipkart, Snapdeal, eBay and Amazon.

Amit Jain, CEO and co-founder, Girnar Software, said, "CarDekho sees immense potential in the product and data analytics capabilities of BuyingIQ."

"In the age of big data, great innovation for developing customer driven solutions comes from analytics. There are also synergies between BuyingIQ and other products of Girnar Soft such as PriceDekho.com and a lot of exciting work will happen on that front too," he added.

CarDekho.com was founded in 2008 by siblings Amit and Anurag Jain. It is an online marketplace for users to buy and sell used as well as new cars. For new cars, the portal offers content for research as well as dealers' contact information. The site also offers information on car insurance and finance. For every buyer that goes to a dealer via CarDekho, the company earns a share. Similarly for the used car model, the firm charges dealers for displaying inventory.

The company claims to be drawing close to 11 million visits per month with 7.5 million unique visitors per month.

In January, CarDekho raised $50 million (around Rs 307 crore) from Chinese investment management firm Hillhouse Capital and Hong Kong-based hedge fund Tybourne Capital. The round also saw participation from existing investor Sequoia Capital. It was valued at $300 million post-money.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)