Info Edge invests $147K more in contacts management startup Diro Labs

Hiring portal Naukri.com's parent Info Edge (India) Ltd has invested an additional Rs 1 crore (roughly $147,000) in contacts management startup Diro Labs, the company said in a stock exchange filing.

Earlier this year, Info Edge had invested Rs 3 crore ($450,000) in the company.

With the new investment, Info Edge now holds 14.77% stake in Vcare Technologies Pvt. Ltd., which runs Diro Labs.

Diro Labs allows users to make groups of contacts, back them up on cloud, and connect contacts with social media. The startup is based out of Delhi, and also has offices in the US and the UK.

The company was founded in 2014 by Vishal Gupta, Sumeet Singh, and Nikhil Rai. Gupta has earlier worked with Delhi Call Centre Ltd, while Singh worked with Emerging India Value Advisors and EY. Rai was earlier with Prema Healthcare Pvt. Ltd.

Diro Labs competes with phone contacts management app InTouchApp, which recently raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Blume Ventures.

Info Edge runs a slew of Internet properties such as job portal Naukri.com, real estate website 99acres.com and matrimonial portal Jeevansathi.com.

For the second fiscal quarter, Info Edge (India) Ltd reported more than double net profit, as earnings from the Naukri.com hiring services business jumped and losses at its 99acres.com real-estate portal shrank. On a sequential basis, net profit was up nearly 80% while net sales increased 6.2%.

Info Edge holds stakes in several technology firms such as food-tech firm Zomato, coupons site Mydala, online insurance policy aggregator PolicyBazaar, e-learning firm Meritnation and online photography startup Canvera Digital Technologies. It was the lead investor in Canvera's $3 million funding round in September. Info Edge invested Rs 6 crore ($900,000) in its portfolio company BigStylist, a beauty services marketplace. Prior to that, it infused Rs 5crore ($740,000) more into Delhi-based Happily Unmarried Marketing Pvt Ltd in June.

In the same month, Info Edge invested in Gurgaon-based company Unnati Helpers, run by Unnati Online Pvt. Ltd, which provides housekeeping services for homes and businesses.

In January, it invested about $1.1 million (Rs 7.4 crore) in mobility- and cloud-based software developer Rare Media Company Pvt Ltd.