Warburg leads $32 million investment in Quikr

Global private equity major Warburg Pincus has led a $32 million investment round in internet and mobile based classifieds venture, Quikr, the company's CEO Pranay Chulet said. Existing investors Matrix Partners India, Norwest Venture Partners and eBay Inc also participated in this round, the company's fifth and largest so far. Since its launch in 2008, Quikr has raised around $50 million in funding. Two other investors in the company, Nokia Growth Partners and Omidyar Networks, did not participate in this round. Quikr, which was called Kijiji India, was launched in February 2008 as a partnership between eBay Inc and Matrix Partners. In August the same year it was spun out as a separate entity and re-launched as Quikr. The company is an online marketplace for buyers and sellers to connect. However, transactions are concluded offline. The company claims to have 17 million unique users a month and lists advertisements across 165 categories in over 80 Indian cities. Nitin Nayar, Warburg Pincus' Managing Director in India said it was the company's leadership position as an innovative online marketplace that resulted in the investment. "We look forward to working closely with the management team to build on the company's success and accelerate its growth plans," Nayar added. The company is intending to strengthen its technology back-end. "We have grown very fast. We will aggressively invest in technology, product, team and marketing," said Chulet, adding that they will also invest in their mobile platform. In the past year, Quikr has paid greater attention to mobile users as well. CEO Chulet said they get around 5-10 million users through their mobile site, mobile app and sms. Venture capital and private equity funds have been aggressively investing in internet-based companies. A number of these investments have been in the online commerce segment. Ascent Capital pumped in $10 million in online grocery shopping site Big Basket in February. The same month Tiger Global and Accel Partners put in $6 million in home and garden online retailer Zansaar. BrainBees Solutions, which runs baby-care portal First Cry and beauty and wellness retail site GoodLife, raised $14 million from IDG Ventures India and SAIF Partners. In fact Quikr is also exploring the e-commerce segment. "We are in a sense the nursery of e-commerce in India. A number of mass market users who are not comfortable transacting online start with us and then graduate to e-commerce," said Chulet. "Pure play e-commerce is definitely on our radar." The company is also looking at acquisitions to speed up growth. "We have a large platform with a large number of users. We will look at companies who can build more sophisticated plays on top of our platform," said Chulet, who declined to reveal revenue details.