Acquisitions in the dotcom space are hotting up. Close on the heels of FlipKart buying out Letsbuy.com , online shopping portal Snapdeal.com has just acquired Delhi-based eSportsbuy.com.

eSportsbuy.com was started a year ago by IIT graduates Prateek Agarwal and Amit Monga, who have worked with companies like Amazon and IBM. The portal retails international and national brands of sporting goods and fitness equipment.

According to Mr Kunal Bahl, CEO of Snapdeal.com, “Indian sports goods market is slated to become a $2.7 billion industry by 2014, and given that the offline market for this sector is highly fragmented, it is a great opportunity for Snapdeal to bridge the gap in demand and supply.”

Snapdeal itself is fairly new and was launched in February 2010. However, it claims to have 15 million registered members. “That's one out of seven Internet subscribers in India,” claims Mr Bahl.

Just two months ago online books retailer FlipKart acquired Letsbuy.com in a cash equity deal that industry observers said signalled consolidation in the ecommerce space here. Recently Amazon's Junglee.com has also launched in India, hotting up competition in this space.

However Mr Bahl said this current deal is different from the FlipKart acquisition, where he said the promoters of Letsbuy.com was fund strapped. “In this case, we are buying a young company, who felt that working off a larger platform like ours made sense.”

“Smart entrepreneurship is about timing,” he added. He did not disclose the deal size, though said it was a cash and equity deal. “We have acquired 100 per cent of the assets. And there is an earn-out component attached to it,” he said.

> Chitra.n@thehindu.co.in

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