Flipkart.com has struck another deal in India – Chakpak.com, a Bollywood news site that offers updates, news, photos and videos.
Techcircle.in first reported that Flipkart was in talks to acquire Chakpak.com. Incidentally, both Chakpak.com and Flipkart.com are backed by international venture capital firm Accel Partners.
Although repeated attempts to contact the founders of Flipkart did not elicit any response till the time of posting this article, Alootechie has confirmed from Flipkart that the firm has bought the rights to Chakpak.com’s digital catalogue. It quotes Sachin Bansal, CEO and co-founder of Flipkart.com as saying that it is part of his digital strategy.
Flipkart had previously book recommendation engine WeRead by Lulu and digital music firm Mallers, Inc.
Chakpak was founded in 2007 by Gaurav Singh Kushwaha and Nitin Rajput in Bangalore. It had five million unique visitors per month as of 2008 but not much has been heard from it since. In fact, there have been no updates on its Twitter handle and Facebook page since June 2011. The site is being monetised through advertising but plans to add more revenue streams – through merchandising and paid downloads of movies – do not appear to have taken off. Chakpak competes with various other Bollywood portals such as Bollywood Hungama by Hungama Digital Entertainment, Santabanta.com, Galatta.com, IBN Live’s movie channel (previously Buzz18), E24Bollywood and MyPopKorn by Digital Media Convergence Ltd.
Flipkart is one of India’s fastest growing e-commerce sites, selling books, handsets, consumer electronics, movie DVDs, etc. After raising a total of $31 million so far from Tiger Global Management LLC and Accel Partners, the company is now looking to acquire firms to complement its current service offerings. It is also raising between $150 million and $200 million from private equity firms Carlyle and General Atlantic, according to a Reuters report. Flipkart expects to cross $100 million in revenue this year.
