Quikr invests in street view search engine WoNoBo

Online classifieds venture Quikr has invested an undisclosed amount in A N Virtual World Tech Ltd, the company that runs hyper-local search engine providing 360-degree street views under WoNoBo.com.

WoNoBo is part-owned by Indian geo-spatial technology company Genesys International Corp.

"This investment by Quikr is a strategic move as it deepens its offerings in several verticals and consolidates its position in the online classifieds industry," Genesys International said.

Last year, WoNoBo.com CEO Zaki Ansari had told Techcircle.in that the company was in advanced talks with a few strategic and financial investors to raise around $15 million in funding to invest in this real estate vertical.

In May last year, WoNoBo had launched a sub-domain for real estate that enables brokers and potential customers to view properties as well as their surroundings online. The product offers panoramic images that can be used by brokers to create showcases for customers while customers can look at properties listed by individual sellers.

Quikr is looking to create separate properties for its key verticals and last month launched QuikrHomes as its real estate vertical. Tiger Global-backed Quikr is also inching closer to acquiring realty portal CommonFloor.com.

Quikr's valuation hit $1 billion after raising $150 million (over Rs 900 crore) in April and the company is flush with cash. It is not clear if this is a strategic investment given WoNoBo's real estate sub-domain that could gel with QuikrHomes or a financial investment in a startup. Several large tech firms in the country including Flipkart, Snapdeal and Ola, besides their founders, have been actively investing in tech startups.

WoNoBo, which was launched in October 2013, enables users to search for and view 360-degree walkthroughs of hotels, monuments and parks, and share these points of interests (POIs) with others. In addition, WoNoBo enables users to access, tag and review POIs.

WoNoBo had also announced a partnership, soon after its launch, with the Ministry of Tourism to support the Incredible India marketing campaign, and launched Walking Tours – a product that enabled users to navigate and route their way through cities based on a number of interesting themes.

The service was initially available in 12 cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa, Pune, Ahmedabad, Agra, Jaipur and Surat. As per its website, it is now present in five more cities.