Info Edge Ltd has invested about $1.1 million (Rs 7.4 crore) in mobility-and cloud-based software developer Rare Media Company Pvt Ltd. The investment is expected to support Info Edge’s online realty business 99acres, which already uses Rare Media’s services for its sales staff.
Founded in 2012 by Siddhartha Gupta, Delhi-based Rare Media’s field force tracking service, known as Blue Dolphin, is used for employee location tracking and timekeeping on 3G devices.
“Rare Media has products in the area of B2B sales force management. We have invested in this company because there is a certain sort of dependency that 99acres has on them,” Bikhchandani said.
99acres uses Rare Media’s mobile-based products for data verification of its sales force.
“The Rare Media investment is not a regular financial investment where we look to exit in a few years’ time. Given the 99acres link, we want Rare Media to be financially stable. We want to have influence on this company so that they can align their products with 99acres’ needs,” Bikhchandani said.
Info Edge, which also runs consumer internet properties such as Naukri, Jeevansathi and Shiksha, recently reported a 44 per cent drop in quarterly net profit, as earnings from its core recruitment solutions business under Naukri.com were outweighed by losses in 99acres.com property portal.
99acres competes with PropTiger, Housing.com and CommonFloor (now acquired by Quikr), besides other players. PropTiger is part-owned by News Corp, which acquired the parent of this news website last year.