Adds Analytics Strength via Acquisition
Girnar Software Pvt Ltd., parent company of India’s #1 auto portal CarDekho.com, announced the acquisition of BuyingIQ.com, an intelligent shopping engine, for an undisclosed amount. This is CarDekho’s second acquisition within a year, the last one being the prominent auto portal Gaadi.com in Sep’14.
Buying IQ was founded in 2012 by IIT graduate Piyush Taneja and BITS Pilani graduate Saumitra Purohit, who were later joined by Avinash Kumar (ex-Booz & Co.). BuyingIQ.com, primarily a price comparison portal, took a more comprehensive analytical approach by bringing in data-driven buying recommendations. Since its inception, BuyingIQ has grown its user base multi-fold and at present, serves over 1.2 Million users every month via its website and android app.
With an exclusive focus on electronics, BuyingIQ at present is working with almost all the e-commerce majors including Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ebay and Amazon & has been successfully monetizing its data and content capabilities by partnering with some of the key ecommerce and online classifieds companies in India.
Amit Jain, CEO and Co-founder of GirnarSoft spoke about the acquisition, “CarDekho sees immense potential in the product and data analytics capabilities of BuyingIQ. In our next step to become a global auto classifieds giant, Cardekho's aims to harness this strength of BuyingIQ in its services for car dealers and consumers. In the age of big data, great innovation for developing customer driven solutions comes from analytics. There are also synergies between BuyingIQ and other products of GirnarSoft such as PriceDekho.com and a lot of exciting work will happen on that front too.”
Piyush Taneja, Founder & CEO BuyingIQ, said “BuyingIQ's vision has been to enable consumers make smart buying decisions. Cardekho's similar vision and a very product-centric approach is something that we found inspiring. Their success in the auto classifieds market has been unprecedented, and we are excited to be a part of this team"
Saumitra Purohit (Founder & CTO) said "In a short span of 2 years, BuyingIQ has been able to help a lot of users in making better, more objective decisions when buying electronic gadgets. Cardekho has similar set of core values and what they've achieved in the automobile sector is truly amazing. With Cardekho's resources and scale, we are sure to take the BuyingIQ platform to the next level".
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Using BuyingIQ.com a user can get a BuyingIQ Score on products they’re interested to buy. The scoring system, analyses millions of curated product reviews crawled from all over the Internet to put forward an unbiased score in front of the consumer. Based on the score it further tells a user whether to buy a product or skip it. Users can also compare prices from online stores, read quality reviews from its tech community, get product recommendations and set product/price alerts.
GirnarSoft says that while BuyingIQ will continue to operate as an independent portal, the founders are expected to take up larger roles within GirnarSoft. Piyush and Saumitra will take up leadership positions in the Product and Technology teams, while Avinash will drive select strategic initiatives within the company.
Source : CarDekho.com acquires BuyingIQ.com
