Snapdeal buys gift recommendation firm Wishpicker

In its first acquisition after USD 627-million Softbank fund infusion, e-commerce major Snapdeal has acquired Wishpicker, an online gift retailer founded by IIT-Delhi graduates.

The acquisition amount for Wishpicker, which was founded last year itself by IITians Apurv Bansal and Prateek Rathore, was not disclosed.

"We are investing in strengthening our technology platform and Wishpicker.com is an excellent platform with top-tier entrepreneurial, engineering talent and fits in perfectly with our vision," Snapdeal Co-Founder Rohit Bansal said today.

Wishpicker claims to provide "gift ideas from across the internet" through intelligent gift recommendation engine. It uses parameters like relationship with the recipient, age and personality for suggesting gifts.

Bansal said as consumer buying trends are evolving, intelligent recommendations will be one of the key drivers for business volume for sellers.

This is the company's first acquisition after Japanese telecom and Internet giant SoftBank invested USD 627 million in the homegrown online marketplace in October.

Overall, this is Snapdeal's fifth acquisition since inception. Snapdeal had earlier acquired Bangalore-based group buying site Grabbon.com (June 2010), esportsbuy.com (April 2012), Shopo.in (May 2013) and Doozton (April 2014).

"This is an important acquisition for us in terms of adding new technology capabilities and helping sellers connect with buyers in newer ways," Bansal said.

With over 30 million members and more than 50,000 sellers, Snapdeal.com delivers products to 5,000 cities and towns in India.

Snapdeal has received funding from several global marquee investors like Softbank, BlackRock, Temasek, eBay, Premji Invest, Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Ratan Tata, Nexus Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital among others.

Snapdeal had said it would use the investments from Softbank to expand its chain of fulfilment centres and make acquisitions in the coming few months, specifically in the area of mobile technology.

Co-founder Kunal Bahl had told PTI: "Snapdeal is looking at acquisition opportunities across sizes, ranging from less than USD 1 million to USD 100 million."