 "Digital classifieds player Quikr raises Rs 550 cr from Swedish firm Kinnevik")
One of India’s biggest digital classifieds enterprises, Mumbai-based Quikr, has raised approximately Rs 550 crore in from family-run Swedish investment firm Investment AB Kinnevik, the company said in a statement.
“Quikr has grown rapidly based on a deep understanding of the Indian market,” Mia Brunell Livfors, president and CEO of Kinnevik said in the statement. “It’s targeting a tremendous opportunity in a large growth market and we look forward to being a part of its exciting journey forward.
The company’s investors include Matrix Partners, eBay,Nokia Growth Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.
Earlier today the _Economic Times_reported that, according to sources,the investment took place across two rounds. The first phase was completed in September 2013 when current investor Warburg Pincus pumped in initial funds, while last part of the deal was wrapped up last week.The deal values Quikr at Rs 1,530 crore.
Global investment bank and asset manager Investec and Avendus Capital acted as the financial advisors for the transaction.
Neither the investors nor Pranay Chulet, Quikr’s co-founder and CEO, replied to any of_ET’s_emails.
Quikr has seen seven successful fund raising rounds yield close to Rs 900 crore. The website receives 32 million unique monthly visitors and is present in close to 1,000 cities.
[caption id=“attachment_78961” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image: Company website[/caption]
The investment marks the first footprint of Kinnevik in India, though it has backed German incubator Rocket Internet which runs popular Indian ecommerce enterprises Jabong and FoodPanda.
Quikr has been rolling out innovative services in an attempt to increase their classifieds numbers. Last month, the company introduced the maximum sales price (MSP) index whichshow buyers a range of prices that it thinks are right for the product.
According to reports , it works using special algorithms designed by Quikr’s internal team, which take into account the pricing of that particular item in that category based on similar product listings over the past three months. To enable this Quikr uses data from over 10 million live ad listings.
Before that Quikr tied up with Junglee.com , a comparison-shopping website, to have its classified show up in user searches for similar products. For now, the service is availableacross 10 Indian cities - Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune.
The Quikr investment is the latest in a long line of investor funding flowing into India’s explosively lucrative ecommerce and online retail space. Research firm Forresterpredicts that India’s online retail spending will grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 50 percent over the next five years and reach $16 billion by 2018, an eight-fold increase from 2013.
Read the entire_Economic Times_article here
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