Wahanda, the Health and beauty marketplace — which has grown to be Europe’s largest to date — has acquired Lithuanian-based Lemon Labs for an undisclosed amount, but understood to be in the seven figures.
The move comes at an important time for Wahanda, which, despite growing to a decent size on the web, has for too long ignored the mobile space. Clearly acquiring a mobile app developer is going to help remedy this problem.
Wahanda now has over 8,000 spas and salons signed up to its online booking platform and claims to be growing at 280 percent year-on-year, taking a cut from these bookings.
Probably less than coincidentally, prior to the acquisition, Lemon Labs had been building Wahanda’s consumer and business apps already, according to Lopo Champalimaud, Wahanda CEO and founder. “Last week we broke through the 150,000 downloads mark, and that number is growing 20% month on month,” he said.
Indeed, according to some stats, 50 percent of all hair and beauty appointments are now made via a mobile device (let’s call that using the phone app shall we?), and that a fifth of consumers who make appointments now expect to be seen within three hours of making that booking. A mobile booking app could therefore work wonders.
The Lemon Labs deal is the second acquisition for Wahanda since it bought its German equivalent Salonmeister in November 2014 after raising $26 million in fresh investment last year.