India-based startups seem to be all the rage and are going global in 2014. After Facebook acquired Little Eye Labs earlier this year, Yahoo! has allegedly snapped up another Indian startup, Bookpad, for $15 million.
One-year-old Bookpad offers hosting for cloud-based documents and is the brainchild of IIT alumnus Aditya Bandi, 25, with Ashwik Battu, 23, and Niketh Sabbineni, 24.
The enterprising youngsters came up with the idea of forming Bookpad when they were facing difficulties with editing or annotating documents that they uploaded to the cloud in real time.
Bookpad's DocsPad enables users to check out any document. Presently, Bookpad offers support for nearly 15 types of document formats. Moreover, users can annotate and edit within the app or website. DocPads is compatible across all platforms; one need not download plug-ins or additional software.
The Bangalore-based company reportedly got noticed by Yahoo! when the founders participated in Nasscom's Innotrek in Silicon Valley earlier in 2014. The event was intended to aid Indian startups mingle with U.S. technology biggies to acquaint them with the startup environment in the country. It was here that the Bookpad trio met Rob Schram, an M&A consultant, who has supposedly been instrumental in bringing about the deal with Bookpad.
The acquisition by Yahoo! is yet to be confirmed by the latter, but if true it would be its first in the country. According to the Times of India, Yahoo! has netted Bookpad for $15 million. However, sources of the Economic Times with "direct knowledge of the developments" point to $8.3 million.
The sources also reveal that Bookpad will shift its employees from Bangalore to Silicon Valley, based on the terms of the deal. They said Bookpad was also being eyed by Dropbox and Autodesk.
The acquisition seems to have excited the Karantaka government as its IT secretary Srivatsa Krishna expressed his pleasure.
"Bookpad has done us proud by being acquired by Yahoo!. It is disruptive technology at its best. Bangalore is inching its way up to becoming the startup capital of the world," said Krishna.
Yahoo!, however, is yet to acknowledge the deal and the founders are not commenting on the acquisition either.
