Quikr gets $90 million funding as it battles to be India’s top classifieds site

Indian online classifieds site Quikr has secured $90 million in funding. It’s the fifth major funding round – and the seventh in total – for the startup, which features listings for things like jobs and services as well as items posted for sale.

Today’s $90 million investment was led by Sweden’s Kinnevik, which is perhaps best known for hurling huge sums of money at Rocket Internet. Previous investors Warburg Pincus, Norwest Venture Patners, eBay, and Nokia Growth Partners also contributed to this latest Quikr round. It has now raised nearly $150 million in total.

The Economic Times notes that Quikr is now effectively valued at $250 million.

(See: 4.14 million new tablets shipped in India last year, iPad is third most popular)

Quikr’s biggest rival in this space in India is not Craigslist – it’s OLX India. The OLX empire stems from Argentina, and it launched in India in 2007, one year before Quikr started up. OLX India claims to be the biggest classified ads site in the country, hitting a grand total of half a billion page-views in mid-2013. But it’s not clear how many are monthly page-views. OLX India has big money behind it from South Africa’s Naspers.

Quikr gets 32 million unique visitors every month. It makes money from premium listings, leads generation, and advertising.

(Source: Economic Times)

(Editing by Josh Horwitz)