India’s Yebhi Expands Its E-Commerce Team, Acquires Madeinhealth Founders

[Update on May 23rd: I had incorrectly asserted that Yebhi bought up the whole startup, but it actually just acquired the startup team. And so I have had to amend this post. My apologies].

Gurgaon-based fashion e-commerce site Yebhi is expanding its team, having just announced its acquisition of the pair of founders behind the health and fitness e-retailer Madeinhealth.com. The deal comprises of cash and equity for the smaller startup team, but the precise financials haven’t been made public. As for the startup website itself, that has been snapped up by specialist HealthKart.com, who described swallowing up its smaller rival as an “excellent strategic fit.”

Yebhi – formerly known as BigShoeBazaar in its initial incarnation back in 2007 – has grown to cover a lot more than just footwear under the stewardship of its CEO and owner, Manmohan Agarwal. The company was splashing the cash earlier this month as well, acquiring jewelry portal Stylishyou.in

In a press release issued earlier, Mr. Agarwal said:

We are happy to welcome the founding team of Madeinhealth to join the Yebhi team. They are a young and enthusiastic team and they bring zeal and a new perspective to [us].

Madeinhealth’s Jatin Modi said, in turn, that “Yebhi has the potential to be the pioneer e-commerce company” in India, and will now join the Yebhi business strategy team along with his co-founder Maniraj Singh.

It all points to lots of small-scale but meaningful movement and consolidation in India’s nascent online retailing space – and an apparent determination on the part of Yebhi to expand to challenge the likes of Flipkart and Homeshop18 across numerous product categories.