Mumbai-based Logicserve Technologies Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates coupon provider Couponraja.in and price comparison site CompareRaja.in, has raised $500,000 (Rs 3 crore) from Mahesh Pratapneni, Pallab Chatterjee and a bunch of unnamed investors.
Pratapneni is managing director of Singapore-based VC fund EmergeOut Ventures while Chatterjee is managing director of Symphony Technology Group, a private equity company based in the US.
Logicserve will use the money to improve technology assets and accelerate user acquisition efforts for both properties, the company said in a statement.
"E-commerce in India is transforming the way we shop. Couponraja and CompareRaja are helping consumers discover deals to save them money and time. Both brands have witnessed exponential growth in the past two years. Mahesh and Pallab's expertise will help accelerate this growth and establish our brands as a one-stop savings destination," said Chugh, CEO of Couponraja and CompareRaja.
Couponraja was launched in 2012 by Prasad Shejale and Rohit Chugh. While Shejale has completed his higher studies from Goa Institute of Management, Chugh has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Calcutta. The site offers discounts and deals on thousands of categories and products across fashion, travel, and food and drinks, etc.
Operating in the online coupon space since 2008, Logicserve runs a slew of portals, including Voucherking in the UK; Big Ticket Shop in the UK; Gutscheinheute.de in Germany; besides Couponraja in India.
As part of the deal, both investors Pratapneni and Chatterjee have joined the company's board of directors. The websites (Couponraja and CompareRaja together) claim to have about 5 million page visits a month and generate over 3,000 transactions daily for brands such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, FoodPanda and Paytm.
Emerge Venture's latest investment was in MedGenome Labs ($1.5 million), a Bangalore-based high-end diagnostics services company. Apart from MedGenome, Emerge Venture’s portfolio companies include Clairvoyant, Impelsys and Saksin Life Sciences.
Chatterjee is a technology and management expert who had a long stint with Texas Instruments as CTO and later worked as CEO of i2 Technologies for nine years. He manages a portfolio of private equity businesses around the world for Symphony.
CompareRaja and Couponraja compete with the likes of Rocket Internet-backed CupoNation, Shop Pirate, CashKaro and CouponDunia. In May last year, Times Internet had acquired a majority stake in the coupons service CouponDunia. Following the acquisition, Times Internet announced the merger of its deals site TimesDeal with CouponDunia, bringing the company’s entire coupon business under the CouponDunia brand.
Mumbai-based price comparison and product discovery portal YouTellMe.com acquired coupons and deals portal Priceburp.com in March this year.
