Commonfloor, an Indian search engine start-up that lists real estate properties in India has ‘acqui-hired’ Bakfy, an anonymous gossip app developed by a Bangalore based seed funded startup.
Seems a little strange, doesn’t it? Real estate.. and gossiping students? Acqui- hiring literally means talent acquisition. A company acquires another company, just because they are impressed with the work and expertise the latter does, but they’re not interested in the latter’s products or services. Bakfy co-founder and CEO Ashutosh Garg confirmed that the deal is cash-equity. The app itself is not a part of the deal. The team of Bakfy will join Commonfloor as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIRs- cool title, if you ask me), and work at interfacing social lives with mobile ones- building a social network for apartments. Quoting Sumit Jain, co-founder and CEO of CommonFloor-
We liked the founders and their work in building a mobile-only anonymous social network. We are bullish on mobile and the Bakfy team brings proven capability of scaling up a mobile-only social network in India, which is quite unique.
Calling Bakfy one of the best designed and developed Indian mobile apps in the early-stage segment, he also believes talent acquisition is one of the best ways to get the best people on board- collaborative and entrepreneurial, out-of-the-box thinkers.
CommonFloor had a similar app in the works, called Ugal Do. The Bakfy team believes that they can add value to Commonfloor with socio-mobile innovation. The anonymous social networking ground is very hyped, popular, and very shaky – this space is difficult to get cash flowing in. It was a no-contest thing for Bakfy founders to grab a swift exit out of this domain and get into a steady growth market with lots of avenues of opportunities. So, yes, Bakfy will shut down.
To understand just how vast the online real estate market in India can get, look at the $90 million funding Housing.com got from SoftBank- a Japanese telco conglomerate.In fact, U.S. media giant Newscorp marked its debut in the Indian investment battlefield with a $30 Million investment in online real-estate search engine, PropTiger.com CommonFloor had raised $30 million from American hedge fund Tiger Global Management in September, taking the total funds raised to nearly $50 million.
