Times Internet seems to be on an acquisition spree. Since start of this year, they have already made 3 different acquisitions (recently Gaana acquired Musicfellas and TimesCity acquired Dineout ), and now have made announcement for the fourth.
Times Internet , a digital product company and a part of The Times of India Group, announced today that it have acquired a majority stake in Mumbai-based CouponDunia Media Private Limited, which owns and operates CouponDunia.in, one of the leading coupon marketplace in India.
The terms and financials of the deal were not disclosed.
Times Internet also owns and operates Times Deal, which is in the similar space and post the acquisition both these platforms will merge to form a single entity. According to press release sent to us, CouponDunia will retain its identity, which means TimesDeal will cease to exist and operate under CouponDunia brand.
Update: Times Internet got back to us with clarification, in which they mentioned, “TimesDeal will be merging with CouponDunia, with CouponDunia as the brand we will align around going forward. TimesDeal has focused on local offline deals, whereas CouponDunia has focused more on online deals, so they will fit with each other well.”
CouponDunia was founded in 2010 and currently serves coupons for over 1500 online brands and has over 1 million subscriber base. They also currently have presence in 4 other countries; CupomWorld in Brazil, KuponDunya in Turkey, KodyBony in Poland and CouponDunia Indonesia.
Here is the traffic and engagement comparison (based on similarweb) of CuponDunia.in and TimesDeal.com.
The graph clearly points to fact that both these sites will complement each other quite well. While CouponDunia is quite high on organic search traffic, TimesDeal is high on referral traffic. The combined entity will surely benefit from the referral traffic generated by various Times properties, which will also mean that CouponDunia will lead Indian coupon & deals space by a fair margin.
Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times Internet said: “This investment continues The Times Group’s strategy of strengthening its position in digital media. Sameer has built a great business from scratch. We are as passionate as he is about offering the best value choices to consumers. We are excited at the prospect of leveraging Times’ resources, including TimesDeal’s existing local deals presence, to build an even more compelling value proposition for consumers with CouponDunia.”
Sameer Parwani, Founder and CEO, CouponDunia India Private Limited said, “In a short span of under four years, CouponDunia has emerged as the leading Indian destination for digital coupons. We receive over 2 million visits a month and are driving Rs 500 Cr of purchases annually from over 1500 online retailers and brands. We’re thrilled to join Times. With their support, CouponDunia will be better placed to offer even greater value to the consumer.”
We think CouponDunia is yet another great acquisition by Times Internet!
[…] have earlier acquired 4 other startups including CouponDunia, DineOut, Moneysights and MusicFellas. The acquisition was announced officially in times internet […]