BackMockBank acqui-hires Litoro
MockBank Learning, a test preparation start-up for govt jobs, said it has acquired web and mobile and services firm Litoro
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Bengaluru: MockBank Learning Pvt. Ltd, a test preparation start-up for government jobs, said on Tuesday that it has acquired Vijayawada-based web and mobile and services company Litoro Tech Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
The purchase is part of a so-called acqui-hire strategy in which one company buys another to gain access to the target’s talent pool rather than its products and services.
Financial details of the purchase weren’t disclosed.
“The primary purpose for the acqui-hire was to strengthen our team. Litoro seemed a natural fit because they have been our technology outsourcing partners and really understood our product well, even before coming on board," said Konark Singhal, co-founder and managing director of MockBank.
Litoro was founded in 2012 by Suresh Bala and Naresh Sennamsetty. Following the acquisition, Bala will head the engineering team at MockBank.
In September, MockBank raised $400,000 in a seed round of funding led by Blume Ventures. Singapore-based angel fund Mercatus Capital and angel investors such as SlideShare co-founder Amit Ranjan and Bain and Co. India chairman Srivatsan Rajan also participated in the round.
The company, which was started by former Bain executive Singhal, former International Business Machines Corp. executive Manesh Jain and former Sify executive Ramesh Narayanan in July 2013, focuses on jobs related to the banking, financial services and insurance sector, including public sector banks, Reserve Bank of India and Life Insurance Corporation of India.
MockBank also plans to explore categories like civil and judicial services, engineering and teaching.
The company claims to have more than 100,000 users, over 5,000 among them being paying customers. MockBank charges customers between ₹ 150 and ₹ 6,000 depending on the services.
India has become the largest e-learning market after the US, and the sector is projected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 17.4% between 2013 and 2018—twice as fast as the global average, a recent UK-India Business Council report said.
According to Tracxn, a start-up tracker, at least 73 companies in the online education segment have raised institutional capital this year. About $63 million have been pumped into this sector since 2014, with Simplilearn, which has raised $28 million, and Toppr, with about $12.2 million, being the top recipients of investment.
The businesses can be broadly classified into two segments: companies such as Toppr, Examify, Embibe and Meritnation, which are test-preparation sites, and the likes of Simplilearn and Edureka, which provides certificate courses across sectors for working professionals.
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