In its first acquisition after $627-million Softbank fund infusion,
e-commerce major Snapdeal has bought 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 cofounder Rohit Bansal said on Thursday .
Wishpicker claims to provide “gift ideas from across the internet“ through an 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 $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).
