Update: Flipkart informs us that it has acquired the rights to Chakpak’s digital catalogue which includes 40,000 filmographies, 10,000 movies and close to 50,000 ratings. It has categorically said that it will not be involved with the original site and will not use the brand name.
When asked how the development fits into Flipkart’s business model, it responded that since it plans to offer digital content to its users, the acquisition will allow it to offer editorial and user generated content for a vast Indian movies catalog that it feels will appeal to its customer base. It did not respond to our query on the value of the acquisition and the stake sale that it acquired.
Corrigendum: Flipkart has clarified that it has acquired Chakpak’s digital catalogue and not the website. We have updated our headline reflecting it.
Flipkart, among India’s largest online retail businesses has acquired Bollywood content portal Chakpak.com’s digital catalogue, reports Alootechie. The exact terms of the deal and financial details have not been disclosed. The report quotes Flipkart CEO and co-founder, Sachin Bansal, who informs that the acquisition is part of the company’s digital strategy, inline with the the recent acquisition of Mumbai based business digital content platform company, Mime360 and that the company was mulling over the way forward for Chakpak.
Chakpak, essentially a content portal around films, covering Bollywood, Tamil and Telugu films., with movie timing, movie information, film reviews, a stars directory, video clips, wallpapers, film news etc is now defunct. The site was founded in 2007 by Gaurav Singh Kushwaha and Nitin Rajput, raising its seed funding from Erasmic Ventures (now Accel Partners), and an undisclosed amount of money from VC firm Cannan Partners with Accel Partners also paricipating. It used to compete with other Bollywood portals such as Bollywood Hungama (formerly IndiaFM), Buzz18, ZoomTV,E24Bollywood, MyPopKorn and others.
With Bollywood being one of the key ingredient for all content players, in addition to there being a large number of sites focusing on the same kind of content, it is difficult to understand why Flipkart acquired Chakpak, even if it was to leverage the site for its upcoming digital downloads platform. We feel that the acquisition will be more on the lines of Amazon acquiring IMDb to benefit from its dedicated ad inventory for driving online sales of movies, music and merchandise. It could also be possible that it integrates digital downloads with content.
Related:
– We Plan To Complete Our Digital Distribution Rollout By End Of Next Year – Binny Bansal, COO, Flipkart
– Flipkart Acquires Mime360; To Launch Digital Distribution Of Music, E-books, Games
