Quikr

Quikr is an Indian classified advertising platform. It was founded by Pranay Chulet and Jiby Thomas in 2008,[1][2] and as of 2013 reported 12 million listings.[4] Headquartered in Bengaluru, Quikr has a listings in over 1,000 cities in India in categories such as mobile phones, household goods, cars, real estate, jobs, services and education.

History

Quikr was initially launched as Kijiji India in November 2005.[5] Kijiji.in was owned by Kijiji International, an eBay Inc subsidiary.

In 2008, Mumbai based venture capitalist, Matrix Partners India, invested in the Kijiji India, following which Kijiji India was hived off Kijiji International and restructured as an independent company and re-branded as ‘Quikr’ which was jointly owned by Matrix Partners and eBay Inc.

In January 2016, Quikr announced it had acquired the real estate portal commonfloor.com in a $200 million all-stock deal and will be merging it with its real estate division QuikrHomes.

Pranay Chulet

Pranay Chulet is an Indian entrepreneur and business executive. He is a co-founder and the CEO of Quikr, India’s largest[citation needed] online and mobile classifieds portal.

Background

Paranay Chulet attended the Kendriya Vidyalaya in Dariba, Rajasthan. He holds an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.

Career

After graduating from IIM Calcutta, Chulet joined Procter & Gamble in a brand management position. He left P&G in 1997 to join Mitchell Madison Group as a management consultant. He later worked in a variety of roles in Walker Digital, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Chulet started his first entrepreneurial venture, Excellere, in 2007. In 2008, he founded Kijiji India, which was later rebranded as Quikr. Quikr has raised over $150 million in funding from private equity and investment firms like Warburg Pincus, Omidyar Network, Matrix Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Investment AB Kinnevik, and shareholders like eBay.