Global leader of group buying, Groupon Inc, has acquired India's upcoming daily deals website SoSasta.com from Kolkata-based Friday Media Pvt Ltd. The size of the deal was not disclosed. The Chicago-based Groupon Inc is thus establishing an India presence through this acquisition.
The world's fastest growing internet company had hit headlines last month by turning down a $6-billion takeover from Google Inc. The company later - on December 31, 2010 - raised $500 million by selling an equity stake.
In August, it expanded to Japan and Russia by acquiring Qpod.com and Darberry.com. In December, it acquired daily deal sites uBuyiBuy.com, Beeconomic.com and Atlaspost.com and expanded into Hong Kong, Singapore, Phillipines and Taiwan. Continuing its acquisition trail into APAC, it has now entered the nascent Indian ecommerce market.
Sosasta.com was launched in October 2010 and is now present in 11 cities - Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Delhi/NCR, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Nagpur, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. It currently employs 30 at Kolkata, according to co-founder of SoSasta.com, Udayan Bubna. Udayan Bubna joined as a co-founder of Sosasta.com in May 2010 and was previously VP Operations, Baljit Agrotech Ltd.
Friday Media Pvt Ltd was set up in July 2009 by Ananya Bubna, who was previously a financial analyst, asia-pacific profitability at Google.
He was also the CEO and Head, Sales for East India at Google, according to the company. Prior to Google, he co-founded a manufacturing startup and was a consultant at Deloitte’s Strategy & Operations group. He has a degree in Business, Mathematics and Economics from Carnegie Mellon University.
Ananya Bubna has already assumed his new role as managing director, Groupon India according to his Linkedin profile. Besides SoSasta.com, Friday Media appears to also run IT consulting with Accenza and VanityHealth.
The deal was first reported by