Wellness products focused e-commerce startup Lifemojo has been acquired by online travel agent Via, reports Pluggd.in. No formal communication has been issued by the company with regards to the deal, however, Pluggd.in notes that the Lifemojo.com domain’s ownership details reflect the name Flightraja Travels. The report also adds that the founders of Lifemojo, Varun Gupta and Namit Nangia, who are ex-employees of Via, and Himanshu Khurana, had been working on Via’s Deal service for the past few months, while the acquisition has been formally closed now. Gupta’s LinkedIn profile also indicates that he rejoined Via in October 2011 as CTO, while Khurana’s profile reflects that he joined Via as VP-E-commerce & Deals in the same month.
LifeMojo started out as an online health services and consultancy company, and changed course last year, to become an e-commerce company offering wellness products such as Fitness & Sports Equipments, Organic Products and others. According to the company the shift was to fulfill the increasing demand of its users for health related products, and also since the founders saw traction in the e-commerce space, to increase revenue. On the other hand, Via had also launched a Deals site offering both travel and non-travel deals across categories such as electronics, travel and lifestyle.
While, changing course to venture into e-commerce is nothing new, and from SeventyMM to BigAdda and Taggle all joined the e-commerce bandwagon, last year to reap benefits from the ‘gold rush’. However, ventures like Taggle could not sail through and BigAdda also exited the Readers offer based commerce model, which was a large part of its operations. We wonder if the founders and Via will continue to operate Lifemojo independently, or if they have other plans on their mind.
Nikhil adds: Lifemojo’s acquisition by Via looks rather odd, because there doesn’t appear to be much of a fit between the two companies. It just appears to be a case of old employees joining back. Why Via would buy the company (as indicated by the domain ownership details), is beyond us. Anyone?
