Sapna Book House arm acquires Ishita Tech in all-cash deal

SapnaOnline.com, the e-tailing arm of book store Sapna Book House, said it bought Ishita Technologies Pvt Ltd and its three brands—Bookadda.com, Acadzone.com and Koolskool.com—in an all-cash deal.

The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. However, Ishita was valued at over $13 million in its Series A funding round in 2012. SapnaOnline.com is operated by Bangalore-based Sapna Infoway Private Ltd.

This acquisition will facilitate the company’s venture into newer verticals such as online education through Acadzone and direct school supplies through KoolSkool. While Ishita is strong in the North and North Eastern parts of India, Sapna has a stronghold in the Southern States.

The deal will allow Sapna to offer 12.5 million titles and serve Bookadda’s active customer base of 2 million customers. “The shipments for both brands, SapnaOnline and Bookadda, will be centralised and managed by us and we will offer superior service with delivery within six hours, which will be facilitated by the inventory that we stock in 11 warehouses,” said Nijesh Shah, founder & CEO, Sapna Infoway.

The company will continue to retain the existing features and services offered by Bookadda, Acadzone and KoolSkool, he said. SapnaOnline.com will absorb just six employees from Ishita Technologies’ 70-strong team.

Since inception in June 2012, SapnaOnline has grown from selling 10 books a day to 2,500 books a day. It now has over 500,000 daily active users and over a million registered users, helping it post revenues of $1.5 million.

Shah expects the acquisition to grow the company’s revenue by 300 per cent over the next 12 months. Serial entrepreneur and angel investor in Ishita Technologies, K Ganesh said “This acquisition will enable SapnaOnline to adopt the ‘click and pick’ model which combines online and offline and has been used successfully by both Walmart and Bestbuy.com.

“The model allows users to buy online and pick up the product at the bookstore nearest to them without having to wait for the delivery or be around when the delivery happens.

“More important, with education supplies moving online, life becomes very simple for parents and their children to source books, maps, stationery etc with one click.”

Amazon and Flipkart started off by selling books online, which is a very difficult category to sell, pointed out Hemant Kohli, co-founder and CEO of Ishita Technologies.

“Millions of books are available which have to be located, sourced and shipped. To do this successfully, you need technology which we have created,” he said.

COMMENT NOW