Flipkart acquires Appiterate, to further strengthen its mobile offerings

Wednesday April 29, 2015 , 4 min Read

Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart has announced the acquisition of Appiterate, a mobile engagement and marketing automation company based out of Delhi. The move is aligned to company's ‘Mobile First’ focus and strengthens Flipkart’s presence in the area of mobile technology. The size and structure of deal is not disclosed.

Appiterate Co-founder and CEO, Tanuj Mendiratta confirmed,

Appiterate team will be moving to Bangalore to work with Flipkart. The move is almost complete and the teams have started working together.

What is Appiterate?

Appiterate was incubated as a product within DSYN which started out as a services firm. Founded by Tanuj Mendiratta, Anuj Bhargva, Mayank Kumar and Varun Sharma, Appiterate was launched as an A/B testing tool for mobiles. A/B testing is a methodology to test out two variants and experiment to find out which version works better with the audience. With the world moving towards mobile, it was becoming critical to have this functionality for mobile. This is where Appiterate came in. The founding team has a strong experience in the mobile app space and has in the past built mobile apps for companies such as Microsoft, Zomato, Groupon, Sears etc.

The company, in the past, has helped leading e-commerce companies combine the power of mobile apps and big data to allow them to do one-on-one targeting of their users though push notifications and in-app messages. Appiterate's data science team also helped Ola cabs in the past.

How the deal was sealed

Flipkart was engaged with Appiterate for a commercial partnership, but post a few rounds of discussions,they felt that there was significantly more value through a more strategic relationship. Tanuj says,

Since we were a fairly young company (1.5 years old) and also had funding offers for our next round, we initially resisted the idea. But after further discussions, we realized that Flipkart was going mobile in a big way and was looking for leaders who could drive their mobile growth. The canvas was being redrawn and the scale at which we could contribute was huge. Thus, we decided to take the plunge and the deal was finalized.

Why Flipkart acquired Appiterate?

Appiterate was delivering more than 100 million personalized notifications each month through its platform for leading e-commerce companies. Appiterate was handling a billion events per month and doing predictive analytics over the data to drive better targeting of users. The precise targeting led to upto 300% increase in revenue for some clients compared to un-targeted campaigns.

Nishant Verman, Senior Director, Corporate Development-Flipkart says,

In a short span of 1.5 years, Appiterate has carved out a niche in the industry as being one of the most disruptive companies in its space.We are confident that their innovative platform and techteam will bring deep mobile capabilities to the table which is a key focus area for Flipkart.

According to Tanuj, this acquisition worked out mostly because of following:

Appiterate’s expertise in mobile marketing domain and powerful offering for mobile e-commerce companies- with built in capability for cart abandonment, new product launches, targeted discounts etc. on mobile apps
Alignment with Flipkart’s mobile first approach and vision to improve and expand its mobile app capabilities to cater to the shifting preferences on the user base
The founding team of Appiterate has a strong experience in the mobile app space and has in the past built mobile apps for leading e-commerce companies- a key focus area for Flipkart which was the most tech-oriented company we have come across in the recent past.

Integration of Appiterate

Flipkart has a strong focus on its mobile app for driving growth and that’s Appiterate's expertise lies. Post the acquisition, Appiterate's mobile marketing automation platform will be integrated into Flipkart’s mobile app and will be used to drive up revenue through precise targeting of users based on their activity on the app and website.

Also read: Flipkart ties-up with Mumbai Dabbawalas, dabbles with an on-demand logistics service too

Flipkart has been persistently looking to improve and expand its mobile app capabilities to cater to the shifting preferences on its user base. The company plans to invest in and acquire other companies in this domain and help in building the mobile ecosystem in India.