India Startup News: Flipkart-Letsbuy, Myntra, Myadcorner.com and Gamiana

By Tech Wire Asia | 10 February, 2012

The startup space in India is as vibrant as it ever can be. Yesterday (February 9, 2011) would probably go down as one of the biggest days in the Indian startup space. A forced consolidation lead by the common investors has taken place. This is supposed to keep the Indian eCommerce bubble from bursting.

Flipkart Boxes (CC Samratm/Flickr)

Acquisition: Flipkart-Letsbuy

India’s eCommerce poster child Flipkart has acquired its doppledanger LetsBuy.com. The deal is valued to be at US$ 25 million. LetsBuy has actually been considered to be the main competitor to Flipkart. But with the latter valued at US$ 850 million, the glaring difference in valuations makesLetsbuy hardly a competitor.

The common investors, Tiger Global and Accel Partners, wanted a consolidated big player to make their stakes investment-worthy again. And also there is Amazon’s Junglee, which is just confusing everybody.

Funding: Myntra.com

In a twisted tale, Myntra.com, has raised US$ 20 million from Tiger Global. The same investor which invested in both Flipkart and Letsbuy and the same investor, according to pluggd.in has pulled out of LetsBuy.

Myntra.com has started as a niche eCom player by selling personalized products and later expanded the portfolio to Lifestyle products. Now Lifestyle products is what Myntra really sells. Myntra has already raised US$ 19 million in two separate rounds earlier.

Funding: MyAdCorner

MyAdCorner has raised an undisclosed amount from Singapore based CCube Angels. MyAdcorner is a print advertisement booking service. It is an aggregator of sorts for 1500 odd newspapers across the country.

CCube has recently invested in a Bangalore IT company called Simbus Technologies.

Funding: Gamiana

Indian Angel Network has invested less than a million dollars in Mumbai-based Gaming startup Gamiana. The company has built games like Jamia Online and Vinashi. Gamiana focuses on Brazil, the Philippines and Turkey. IAN has earlier invested in Peel-Works, a company which offers cloud-based solution to manage a company’s salseforce effectively.

IAN has so far invested in more than 22 companies with investments in IndiaCollegeSearch.com, Jigsee, TaxSpanner, Groffr and WebEngage.