Yahoo’s acquisition spree has just hit India as the tech giant bags Bangalore-based year-old startup Bookpad, which specializes in providing cloud-based document hosting and editing capabilities.
The yet-to-be official acquisition has cost Yahoo $8.3 million, Economic Times reports. The Times of India, however, claims the internet giant has bagged the startup for the higher price of $15 million.
Founded in 2013 by IIT-Guwahati alumni including 25-year-old engineering design graduate Aditya Bandi, 24-year-old computer engineer Niketh Sabbineni and 23-year-old chemical engineer Ashwik Battu, Bangalore-based Bookpad is well known for its Docspad application.
The application works similar like Google Docs and allows for cloud-based document hosting, viewing, editing and annotation within a website or app. It supports a range of files types, including Word, Powerpoint, Excel, PDF, ODT, ODP, ODX, ePub 2.0 and image formats and works across devices.
As per terms of the acquisition, the Indian startup’s staff will move to Silicon Valley. However, it’s still unclear if Bookpad will shut down its products as part of the deal.
The talks started in May this year when Bookpad founder Niketh Sabbineni met Yahoo officials during Nasscom’s Silicon Valley InnoTrek trip that was designed to help Indian startups to meet US technology giants and familiarize them with the startup environment there.
BookPad is the second Indian firm to be bagged up by a tech giant, the first being Bangalore-based Little Eye Labs which was bought by Facebook for around $10-15 million in January this year. Little Eye Labs builds performance analysis and monitoring tools for Android mobile apps.
