Update 05/06/2012: We just learnt that AOL seems to be out of contention and a company based out of Chennai – QUSCIENT Technologies is in the race to acquire Minglebox.com. Again, this is still a rumour, there has been no official announcement that has been made as yet. We are following up to get confirmation on this…
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We generally do not cover rumors, but I have now heard this from couple of insiders that Minglebox may be on the verge of getting acquired by AOL. There has been quite a bit of action going inside Minglebox office for past 2 months for an impeding acquisition. However, although the sources have confirmed to us, it is still a rumour at this point of time.
In May 2007, Minglebox.com had received USD 7 Million (Around Rs. 35 Crore ) from Sequoia Capital.
The acquisition is expected to be in tune of Rs. 30 to Rs. 35 crore.
Some Background on Minglebox
Minglebox started as a Social Networking site in 2007, with about 20 other Indian players that included Desimartini.com, Yaari.com, Bigadda.com & others. While some closed down, sites like minglebox realized the difficulty of competing with Facebook.com in social networking space and moved on to other niche verticals. Minglebox rebranded itself as an online resource centre for students preparing for engineering and business management.
Even with changed direction, it has been difficult for Minglebox to grow. They have been clocking annual revenue of about 2-3 crore in past couple of years (I may be wrong, so if anyone knows their exact revenues, do let us know).
Here is a screenshot of Minglebox’s traffic according to Google.
Minglebox is clocking about 1.2 Million Unique visitors and 3.2 million Pageviews in India – Not really something to be proud about for a site that is 5 years old and had a funding of over 35 crore rupees.
It is interesting that AOL’s India domain name aol.in is currently forwarded to coolage.com, a community site for college students. Looks like a good fit for Minglebox’s visitor demographics!
We will update the post as soon as we get a confirmation of some sort.
