Online gadget research and review platform 91mobiles secures $1 million funding from India Quotient & others
Online research and reviews platform for mobile phones and gadgets, 91mobiles has secured around $1 million in its pre-Series A round from a clutch of investors led by India Quotient. The round was also participated by Krishna Motukuri,former CEO of ibibo owned - Tradus.com and Umang Kumar, founder & CEO of Gaadi.
The current round of funding will be used in expanding the team, developing better research tools and content for mobiles & tablets categories. The company also plans to build a similar research experience for other gadget categories like wearables, laptops, cameras, and accessories.
At present, 91mobiles drives gadget sales worth $100 million to retailers listed on the site, and earns affiliate revenue from online gadget retailers like Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, etc. Additionally it also works with most of the leading gadget and telecom brands including Samsung, Micromax, Asus, Dell, Airtel among others to provide advertising and branding solutions to promote their range of products.
“We provide information on the latest happenings and launches in the gadgets space, along with expert reviews on interesting new devices, done by our in-house developed tool – Phone Finder which powers over 100,000 searches every day, and provides an exhaustive listing of all available devices and their key specs. The funding will also used to upgrade the existing mobile site and launch an Android application ," said Nitin Mathur, Cofounder, 91mobiles
Brainchild of Bharanidharan Viswanathan and Nitin Mathur, 91mobiles was launched in mid 2010.With the initial team of 4-5 member, the platform was reaching to 30,000 users per day, in its first year of launch. Its user-base has doubled every year since then, to reach over 250,000 users currently on a daily basis. 91mobiles has an annual revenue run rate of over $1 million, and is aspiring for 300% to 400% growth in the next two years.
An ISB alumnus, Bharani was earlier the Co-founder & CTO of Accentium Web which was acquired by iBibo. Nitin is a graduate from IIM-Calcutta, and had earlier founded an online loyalty & reward venture, PrivilegeCorner, which was later acquired by corporate gifting company - eYantra.