NowFloats acquires messaging app Lookup for cash, stock

NowFloats, a Hyderabad-based technology company announced acquiring Bengaluru-based hyper-local conversational commerce app Lookup for cash and stock.

NowFloats auto-prompts businesses on the local content searches made by their consumers with the help of its Relationship Intelligence Agent (RIA) technology, which is based on machine-learning and big-data built on a mash-up of website content, Google trends, product catalogs, searches and consumer behavior.

The acquisition will help NowFloats add over 90,000 verified businesses to its existing 250,000 online businesses in India. In addition, NowFloats will also get access to over 1.2 million Lookup registered users, especially in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi and Pune.

The platform already has over 250,000 businesses online or about a third of all the small business sites in India, transacting with over six million consumers a month. NowFloats powers more than five percent of all local searches in India today and counts Sleepwell, Bayer, TVS Group, IndusInd Bank, Wicked Ride, Canada's SiberName, and Kenya's Datum Digital among its larger partners and customers globally.

"We wanted to invest in a conversational interface as we always believed that for certain categories (where the user needs more information before making the purchase decision) having a simple way to interact with the merchant is very important. We are going to take Lookup forward as a consumer brand to provide the simplest and fastest way for a user to buy anything from the offline world," said Co-Founder NowFloats, Ronak Kumar Samantray.

Lookup founder Deepak Ravindran will now join as the Head of Conversational Commerce at NowFloats. Deepak has been recognized as one of the outstanding innovators under 35 by the MIT Technology Review and as one of Asia's 21 emerging leaders under 40 by Asia Society.

"This acquisition is a perfect match of great Indian talent that has made its mark on the global tech arena. At NowFloats, we keep building the future and we believe this should be a game changer for our existing and new customers as well as their consumers. We are excited that the Lookup team is already aligned and focused on our shared vision, and this powerful combination will accelerate our learning's and new possibilities," said Co-Founder and CEO NowFloats, Jasminder Singh Gulati.