Acquisitions key to growth at online classifieds platform Quikr

A cursory look at the acquisitions online classified platform Quikr has made — 10 in two years, perhaps the most by a start-up so far — may not immediately give away the plot.

But dig deeper, and one will find that all of them have been acquired to feed on each other’s strength.

“The year before last was the year of build-out of verticals, last year was the year of scaling them, and this year is the year of connecting the dots, i.e. continued growth by tapping into our cross-vertical synergies,” CEO and co-founder Pranay Chulet told BusinessLine .

The company is in fact already hunting down another firm for acquisition — Babajob, a job portal for for blue-collar workers.

Here is how the acquisitions will help each other out: verticals including QuikrJobs, QuikrServices, QuikrCars expect to find customers in Grabhouse, which in turn expects to find customers within QuikrHomes. QuikrHomes expects its rental customers to benefit from QuikrServices in home cleaning and painting services, and QuikrServices is using the logistics infrastructure of QuikrDoorstep and Hiree to provide exclusive packages from AtHomeDiva.

Quikr’s investors include Warburg Pincus, Tiger Global and Matrix Partners, from whom it has so far raised $350 million.

A spokesperson for the company said it has been growing both organically and inorganically; the firm has a sharper focus on select categories such as cars, jobs, homes, services and goods/C2C that are key to its overall growth. “In the process of going deeper into these high-performing categories, companies that have built a good product and have a customer base or insights of the market are being absorbed to scale fast and efficiently.”

Some of the acquisitions are on the way to profitability, the firm said. “While QuikrJobs has turned profitable, we expect some of our other businesses to become profitable or reach close to profitability this year,” the spokesperson said.

QuikrJobs saw a 3x growth in revenues within the jobs vertical in FY17 — a large part of which has been driven by a healthy balance between its online and offline recruitment services. “Every business that turn profitable will start supporting our growth investments in other areas,” the spokesperson added.

“At Quikr, we help our consumers upgrade their lifestyle, a premise that runs across our categories. Our pioneering verticalisation strategy in the classifieds space has only allowed consumers to focus on their specific needs when they come to Quikr. Through organic and inorganic ways, our select categories have scope to innovate further and more to end-consumers. Under this premise, companies with complementary propositions fit well,” the spokesperson said.