Snapdeal, one of India’s largest e-commerce businesses, has acquired Wishpicker, a tech platform that uses machine learning to deliver recommendations for gift purchases. The deal’s financial terms were undisclosed.
The company says this is the fifth acquisition it has made so far. Back in April, the company, whose competitors include Amazon India and Flipkart, announced that it had purchased Doozton.
Since folded into Snapdeal’s main site, Dootzon, a fashion products discovery site, was also geared toward matching shoppers with products they are likely to purchase. Other companies Snapdeal has acquired include group buying site Grabbon in 2010; sports retailer esportsbuy.com in 2012; and Shopo.in, a marketplace for handmade items, in 2013.
Snapdeal, Flipkart, and Amazon India are competing with each other for shoppers as India’s e-commerce market grows rapidly. According to one report, e-commerce is expected to grow from $10 billion to $43 billion in the next five years. Snapdeal, Flipkart, and Amazon India are expected to acount for $4 billion in sales this fiscal year.
As they size of their inventory grows, it’s important for India’s main e-commerce businesses to focus on finetuning their product categories and recommendation engines. Founded by Apurv Bansal and Prateek Rathore, Wishpicker’s technology helps users find gift options using information about their relationship with the recipient, the occasion, and his or her age and personality, or looking at the recipient’s likes on Facebook.
In a prepared statement, Snapdeal co-founder Rohit Bansal said, “We are investing in strengthening our technology platform and Wishpicker.com is an excellent platform with entreprenurial, engineering talent and fits in perfectly with our vision. We believe that with consumer buying trends evolving, intelligent recommendations will be one of the key drivers for business volume for our sellers. This is an important acquisition for us in terms of adding technology capabilities and helping sellers connect with buyers in newer ways.”