BuyT will build next-gen platform for Newshunt by integrating shopping and commerce options for local-language users
Newshunt, a local-language mobile news platform in India, has entered the burgeoning e-commerce industry by acquiring BuyT, an e-commerce recommendation platform. The transaction details are not disclosed.
The BuyT team will build the next-generation platform for Newshunt by integrating shopping and commerce options for local-language users on the NewsHunt platform.
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“We intend leveraging BuyT platform to enable commerce on NewsHunt. BuyT will run as a stand-alone unit continuing its existing line of business and enabling commerce for NewsHunt users,” said Virendra Gupta, Founder and CEO of NewsHunt.
The latest deal comes three months after NewsHunt acqui-hired mobile analytics startup Vauntz in March this year.
The players
Newshunt is the product of Bangalore-based Verse Innovation. It offers news from over 100 news sources in 12 languages with over 25,000-plus articles everyday. It has 20 million monthly active users accessing news in Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, Gujarati, Urdu etc. The platform has 2.5 billion page views a month.
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Early this year, Newshunt raised Series C funding of INR 120 crore (US$19.4 million) led by New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge Capital, with participations from existing investors Matrix Partners India, Sequoia Capital India and Omidyar Network. In September 2014, Newshunt had raised its Series B led by Sequoia.
Founded in 2012, BuyT helps people make the most informed decisions while availing digital services and transactions. On the one hand, it collates and curates data from service providers (for example, e-commerce stores, travel portals and other online and offline merchants). On the other, it crawls and analyses digital content (articles, photos, videos and more) to understand and interpret context and user behaviour. Its product ContentLink merges these to recommend the best deals, products and services right where the content is and when a user is looking for related info.
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Currently, the BuyT ContentLink platform has been rolled out with all marquee Indian publishers and media houses serving over 3 million recommendations per day.
The post India’s Newshunt forays into e-commerce by acquiring BuyT appeared first on e27.