You might be surprised to know this but five out of India's 10 biggest startup acquisitions happened in the last two years. Since the pandemic started we are currently in the middle of a boom right now with unicorns, IPOs and acquisitions happening left, right, and center which makes it easy to forget that it hasn't actually always been like this there was a time when startup acquisitions bigger than 100 million dollars were relatively rare here in India. And to this day you can almost count the number of startup acquisitions bigger than 200 million dollars on your fingers. Those are the ones that we're going to be talking about in today's post-

Top 10 Biggest Indian Startup Acquisition



10. Taxi for Sure

Starting things off at number 10 we have a bengaluru-based cab aggregator taxi for sure. This startup founded by aprameo radha krishna and raghunandanji in 2011. Taxi for Sure was one of the earliest players in india's online cab aggregation space by 2015. They had a loyal customer base of 2 million people being served by a network of 15 000 vehicles across 47 cities. Their investors played a crucial role in making this happen investing 44 million dollars over the years, then though in 2013 disaster struck at least from taxi for sure. Ola's perspectives see uber had entered India and in just two years they had already expanded to 11 cities. While ola was still ahead of them with a fleet of a hundred thousand vehicles across 67 cities. They also realized that uber might be able to wipe them out if they played their cards right which is why ola preemptively pursued an aggressive inorganic growth strategy by acquiring taxi for sure in a deal worth 200 million dollars. Today in the 20s we can look back and see very clearly that this was the right move for ola to make now as taxi for sure was absorbed into ola over the span of a couple of months the company's founders decided to go off. They start their own ventures with upromea starting vocal in 2018 and then coup in 2020 and raghunandan starting zolve in 2020.



9. Simply Learn

Well next up at number nine we have san francisco based edtech startup simply learn which is an indian company. Despite the fact that they're headquartered out of the united states because they began their journey in bengaluru see in 2007. Simply learns founder krishna kumar had just sold his first company tech unified for 49 crore rupees and had some free time on his hands. So he decided to start blogging about his learnings on the internet, and this blog became pretty popular by the end of 2009 more than 3000 professionals had taken his project management course in 2010. He decided to turn his blog into a startup an online school for training and upskilling it professionals. Today simplylearn offers more than 40 courses and has trained over 2 million professionals and the best part is simply learn is profitable. Krishna only raised 31 million dollars from investors before eventually selling a controlling stake in the startup to blackstone for 250 million dollars. Thereby giving his investors a between 6 and 20x ROI (Return On Investment). More than a decade after founding simply learn krishna will continue to build the startup with the help of blackstone into the future.


8. Myntra

Moving on to number eight we have bengaluru-based online fashion retailer myntra. Founded by Ashutosh Lavanya, Mukesh Bansal, Ravin Sastri, sankarbura and benitzaksena in 2007. Myntra was just an online platform for selling personalized gift items for the first couple of years by 2010 though their revenue was just 12 crore b's. And so in 2011 they decided to pivot and started selling fashion products instead because of this change. They were bringing in revenue totaling 427 crore rupees by the financial year of 2014. It was around this same time that flipkart was trying to enter into the e-commerce fashion space, but they weren't seeing a lot of success. So in an effort to grow inorganically they acquired myntra in 2014 for 280 million dollars and to this day myntra is one of flipkart's most precious and lucrative acquisitions.



7. WhiteHat jr

Coming in at number seven now we have bengaluru-based ed tech startup white hat jr. Founded by Karamba Judge in 2018. White hat jr offers live one-on-one coding classes to its students. This unique teaching approach combined with their aggressive marketing tactics. The impact of the covid 19 pandemic on the education space enabled the startup to achieve an annual revenue run rate of 150 million dollars in just 18 months of starting. This growth was more than a little bit impressive and caught the attention of byju's who acquired white hat jr for 300 million dollars in an all-cash deal in 2020. This exit was especially lucrative for white hat junior's investors who had only given the startup 11.3 million dollars and saw returns ranging from 10 to 14x of their investment. Byju's is now leveraging white hat junior's expertise to launch byju's future school in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico.


6. Play Simple Games

Next up at number six we have bengaluru-based mobile gaming startup play simple games. Founded by preethi reddy, seton jain, siddharth jain and suraj nalin in 2014. Play simple games make simple word games like word trip, crossword, jam word, bingo, and word bliss. Their games have been downloaded more than 75 million times and they have more than 2 million monthly active users. These users have enabled the startup to build a robust and profitable business with only 4.5 million dollars in external investment in 2020 alone play simple games raked in a massive 83 million dollars in revenue with ebi tda of 18 million dollars which made it a no-brainer acquisition for Swedish gaming for a modern times group who bought play simple games for 360 million dollars in 2021. 


5. Freecharge

Moving on to number five now we have mumbai-based mobile recharge platform free charge. Which was started at a time when a majority of mobile recharging in India happened offline. That's where Kunal Shah and Sandeep Dandan saw an opportunity for disruption in 2010. Over the next five years, the number of Indian internet users would more than triple. By 2015 free charge was doing more than 1 million transactions a month. Thanks to this increase in internet penetration snapdeal was also on the rise and they were on an acquisition spree free charge which they acquired for 400 million dollars was just one of seven companies that they bought in 2015. As we all know that strategy didn't work out too well for them the e-commerce giant collapsed and in 2017. They sold free charge for just 60 million dollars to access bank Kunal Shah on the other hand benefited from the acquisition immensely. The money that he walked away with enabled him to build his next venture cred which he founded in 2018.


4. Great Learning

Coming in at number four now we have singapore-based edtech startup great learning. Which is another one of those companies that is headquartered outside of India. But it is an Indian company as it was founded in gurugram in 2013 by Arjun Nair, Hari Nair and Mohan Lakamraju. This startup offers upskilling courses to help working professionals accelerate their career growth and incredibly. This startup's journey was completely bootstrapped they turned a profit during their second year of operations. They are currently seeing an annual revenue run rate of a hundred million dollars. Their success in the ed tech space caught the attention of byju's who acquired great learning in 2021 for 600 million dollars. The startup will continue to operate independently as a subsidiary. Byju's has already earmarked 400 million dollars for their future growth and the best part of this story is that great learning's employees owned 25 of the startup and will be getting a hundred million dollars from this acquisition.


3. Big  Basket

Next up at number three we have bengaluru-based online grocery delivery unicorn big basket. The story of this company actually begins more than a decade before it was founded in 1999. When abine Chaudhary, Hari Menon launched India's first e-commerce platform fab mart. This startup was a bit too ahead of its time and failed because of India's lack of internet penetration. So the founders did a 180 and started an offline grocery chain called fab mall which was acquired by the aditya birla group in 2007 for 340 crore rupees. They has since been rebranded to more India's fourth-largest supermarket chain. After this acquisition fab mall's founders decided to return to the idea that they had initially been forced to forfeit in the 90s of building something online because this was a new century. The internet was finally economically viable in 2011 in bengaluru using their expertise in the grocery space. They launched big basket an online grocery delivery startup that has since expanded to 30 cities across India and became the country's only grocery delivery unicorn in 2020. TATA acquired a 64 majority stake in big basket in a deal estimated to be worth 1.3 billion dollars.


2. Goibibo

Moving on to number two we have guru gram-based online travel aggregator goibibo. Founded by Ashish Kashyap the startup actually began its journey as a social media platform in 2007 but eventually pivoted into an online travel booking website in 2009. Despite the fact that make my trip had been around for nearly a decade and startups like cleartrip and yatra were already gaining market share by 2015. Goibibo had become a group of companies called the ibibo group which included peyou, redbus and of course goibibo which had since emerged as one of the top three online travel agencies in the country. It was ranked number one when it came to hotel bookings their revenue had doubled from 114 crore rupees to 234 crore rupees. So in 2016 make my trip decided to finally stop competing with the ibebo group and instead acquired them for a massive 1.8 billion dollars to this day the ibibo group is a huge part of make my trips business. Ashish Kashyap on the other hand launched a fintech startup in 2019 called end money. 


1. Flipkart

Finally coming in at number one you probably saw this one coming we have bengaluru based e-commerce behemoth flipkart. Which was started in 2007 by Bini and Sachin Bunsal. Now flipkart started its journey as a humble online bookstore. In the financial year of 2018 and flipkart's revenue had increased by nearly 50 percent from 19854 crore rupees to 30164 crore rupees and they'd raised billions of dollars from their investors. Now at the time Walmart had been looking for an opportunity to enter India's booming e-commerce market and they decided that Flipkart was the best way to do that. They bought a 77 majority stake in the company for 16 billion dollars making it India's largest acquisition ever. Flipkart's investors all saw huge returns from this deal and while Benny and Sachin were unfortunately both were kicked out of the company they made a billion dollars each from the acquisition and went on to start Navi technologies.