Two months after series A, Goodbox acquires SmartPocket

Nexus Venture Partners-backed Goodbox today acquired SmartPocket, a mobile app that allows customers to digitise their loyalty cards, for an undisclosed amount. Post this acquisition, the entire SmartPocket team will be joining Goodbox. The founders of SmartPocket Kiran Shastri and Mayank Shah will be joining the core leadership team.

In November last year, Goodbox raised a Series A round of $2.5 million from Nexus Venture Partners. Speaking of the acquisition Mayank Bidawatka, Co-founder, Goodbox, said that the SmartPocket team will be bringing in their strong engineering and product expertise to Goodbox.

Abey Zachariah, CEO and Co-founder of Goodbox, said that both Goodbox and SmartPocket have similar visions and it made sense to join forces to enable the same goal. He added that they are building strong mobile capabilities and the SmartPocket team will help in the same.

Kiran added that at SmartPocket, they were looking to build a marketplace with a focus on repeat business and customer loyalty through a digital wallet. And they intend to bring the same mindset, technology, and expertise to Goodbox.

Currently operational in Bengaluru, the platform has close to 1,800 merchants on board, including restaurants, packers and movers, supermarkets, laundry chains, canteens, and many others.

YourStory take

Whether it is with the number of ‘me-toos’ in the space or with biggies like Grofers shutting operations in several cities, the hyperlocal marketspace has created quite a buzz. On-demand accounted for 22.5 per cent of all the investments made by the top 10 investors of 2015 (by deal numbers). Many investors and entrepreneurs believe that hyperlocal is the next e-commerce, in terms of growth potential for startups in this space and also market size.

However, several experts and investors also believed that too much money was pumped into the space too soon.

Also, the roll back by big players like Grofers raises questions on whether this young industry can scale beyond major cities.