Axel Springer, India Today to acquire CareWale.com

Multimedia company Axel Springer AG and the India Today Group have agreed to take over automobile website CarWale.com,

Under the deal the $3.6-billion Axel Springer will be picking up a 52.1-per cent stake and the India Today Group, its local joint venture partner, taking  an 18.3 per cent holding, Mint newspaper reported citing an unnamed source. 

According to the report, the source said the stake in CarWale.com, founded by Mumbai-based Mohit Dubey is being sold by venture capital firm Sierra Ventures and early-stage venture fund Seedfund; both are exiting fully for a total of about Rs100 crore.

Axel Springer owns newspapers and magazines, including Auto Bild, an automotive magazine with sales of at least 7 million copies a month, while the India Today Group has been publishing its local edition since 2008 through the joint venture with Axel. India Today also runs shopping site Bag It Today, in which Axel holds a 19.1 per cent stake, according to trade website Medianama.
 
CarWale was founded in 2005 with investments from Seedfund - backed by Google Inc, Motorola Inc, Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group and others. The site clocks over 1.3 million visitors and 17 million page views each month, and claims leadership in the car research and used-car classified ad market in India.

According to Mahesh Murthy, managing partner at Seedfund, the transaction would be one the biggest deals in the digital space since eBay's acquisition of Bazee.com in 2004.

''With a growth rate of over 20 per cent year-on-year, India is projected to become one of the top three online markets in the world by 2013. We already have 100 million Internet users,'' he said.