Smile Group

Smile Group

Type	Internet Ventures
ISIN	🆔
Industry	Business Building, Venture capital, Global Partnerships
Founded 📆	1999 (1999)
Founders 👔	Harish Bahl and Manish Vij
Headquarters 🏙️	Gurgaon, India
Area served 🗺️	World
Members
Number of employees
🌐 Website	smile.co.in
📇 Address
📞 telephone
💼 LinkedIN]	[https://in.linkedin.com/company/smile-group [1]]

Overview

Smile Group is a privately held group of internet ventures focused on the Asian digital industry with holdings in the digital media, marketing SaaS, consumer internet, gaming, and more. The company partners with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and global companies to build ventures. They also invest, expand operations and increase the footprint of the companies they partner with. In the past, it has partnered and built businesses with companies like Airbnb, WPP Digital, Ogilvy, Yahoo!, and ScanGroup (Africa) and worked with Silicon Valley and European investors.

History

Smile Group began as a web technology company, Smile Multimedia (P) Ltd founded by Harish Bahl and CP Singh in 1999. Manish Vij partnered as a co-founder in 2005. Back then he was one of the youngest dotcom entrepreneurs with kabadibazaar.com, India's first auction website. CP Singh started his own venture in 2010.

In 2004, Quasar, a digital marketing company, was incubated by Smile Group. In 2006, Smile Group incubated three companies: an internet advertising network named Tyroo, a retailed infrastructure business named Creons and Travel Meta Search engine named Zoomtra.

In 2009, Smile entered into a partnership with WPP Digital and ScanGroup and launched SQUAD, a digital agency for the Sub-saharan African region. Also in 2009, Smile Group incubated Fashion And You, a flash retail venture in India In 2011, Smile Group launched FreeCultr in partnership with Sequoia and Ru-net. It also co-founded the incubator SpringStar, which later became the globalization partners for AirBnB .

In 2012, LetsBuy, in which Manish Vij was one of the first angel investors, got acquired by Flipkart. Smile Group also launched SeventyNine in 2012, a mobile ad network, and sold it to Bertelssman. In the same year, Tyroo acquired DGM . In addition, Smile Group-backed fashion jewelry site Juvalia & You launched in India. In 2013, Smile Group formed a joint venture with Ogilvy India to strengthen Ogilvy's performance marketing, e-commerce and mobile offerings.

Businesses

Smile Group's operational model can be divided into Business Building, Partnerships, and Investments.

Business Building

Smile Group identifies whitespaces in the market and builds businesses with entrepreneurs and partners. Noteworthy businesses built by Smile Group include SVG Media (acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network), Quasar (acquired by WPP Digital), Tyroo (Joint Venture with Yahoo!), FREECULTR, and Fashion And You.

• SVG Media started its operations in India in 2006, with their first brand Tyroo, as a joint venture between Manish Vij’s Vun Network and Harish Bahl’s Smile Group. During its first year of operation, SVG Media raised $3 million in external funding from Yahoo! In 2011, Yahoo! sold its share in the firm to Xplorer Capital, a US-based growth stage venture capital firm. The firm went on to acquire businesses such as DGM, SeventyNine, and Komli, which are now their flagship brands. The firm was acquired by media agency Dentsu Aegis Network in 2017. According to the founders, the exit has generated returns worth 20 times to its shareholders . Their offerings include online performance marketing, mobile app distribution, social and web services through their flagship brands. They have client bases in India, Indonesia, Dubai, and China.

• Quasar is an integrated digital media agency started in 2005. Their clients include Microsoft, MakeMyTrip, Monster, Motorola, LG, Kingfisher, Zapak and VISA. In 2008, WPP Digital acquired a 75% stake in Quasar With this acquisition, many of the Quasar employees, who held ESOPs, made one crore each, back in 2008. In 2010, the digital media arm of Quasar Pvt Ltd, got integrated with GroupM .

• Tyroo was incubated by Smile Group in 2006. They specialize in providing tools to brands, app developers, media companies, and OEMs for the creation of vertical videos for customer engagement. In 2007, Yahoo! acquired a 35% stake in the firm. Yahoo's stake was bought by growth stage venture capital firm Xplorer Capital in 2011. Getvid.ai, an AI-powered video content creation platform by Tyroo, bagged the #NextBigThing challenge award in 2018. In 2018, Snapchat appointed Tyroo to expand its advertising business in India.

• FREECULTR is an apparel and lifestyle brand launched and backed by Smile Group. The venture was co-founded by Sujal Shah and Sandeep Singh, CEO and COO respectively. Sequoia Capital invested $4 million in the company in 2011. The company further raised $9 million from Ru-Net and Sequoia Capital in 2012. In less than 7 months of its inception, the startup managed to expand into 40 apparel and lifestyle categories . The company was acquired by Arvind Internet in 2016.

• Fashion And You is a fashion and lifestyle flash sales e-commerce platform that was founded in 2010 by Smile Group Venture and Goldsquare Sales India Private Ltd. It was backed by Smile Group founder Harish Bahl. They received their first round of funding at the time of their inception from European and Indian private investors.In 2010, they secured $8 million in funding from Sequoia Capital India. In 2011, they further raised $40 million led by Norwest Venture Partners and Intel Capital. Their latest round of funding was $10 million from Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Nokia Growth Partners in 2014.

• SingleInterface is a location management technology solution for retail brands. Their solution enables brands to build a digital presence, enhance local SEO and drive potential customers to their stores. Smile Group launched the venture in 2014 with Tarun Shobhani, who serves as the founder and CEO of SingleInterface. The company won the i-com Data Venture Challenge organized at Seville, Spain in 2016.They also received the Best SEO for Website in the Indian Digital Media Awards in 2017.

Partnerships (Katalyzers)

Katalyzers is a business building platform launched by Smile Group. It is a $100 million joint venture with TPG Growth, the growth equity investment arm of TPG Capital, San Francisco-based private investment firm. The platform aims to partner with successful internet companies in the marketplace, classified listings, local commerce, digital media, e-commerce, and mobile space and roll-out their businesses across Asia and other emerging markets. Some of their successful roll-outs include the rollout of Airbnb, SQUAD (Acquired by WPP), Neo@Ogilvy (Partnership with Ogilvy India), and Prodigi (Partnership with Hogarth Worldwide).

• Airbnb is an online marketplace and hospitality service for people to lease or rent short-term lodging. Smile Group partnered with Airbnb to internationalize their business operations across 18 countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia in 2011. After partnering with Smile Group, Airbnb received $500 million in funding led by TPG Growth at a valuation of $10 billion. During their last round of funding in 2017, Airbnb was valued at $31 billion.

• SQUAD is an integrated digital marketing agency in Sub-Saharan Africa and is a joint-venture partnership between Smile Group India, Quasar (part of WPP Digital) and ScanGroup, a marketing services company. They have clients in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, and Dubai.

• Neo@Ogilvy is a global digital marketing agency. It is a subsidiary of Ogilvy & Mather, an NY-based advertising, marketing, and public relations agency. In 2014, Ogilvy formed a joint venture partnership between Neo@Ogilvy and the Smile Group. As part of the JV, Smile Group helped Neo@Ogilvy to strengthen their marketing strategies, e-commerce, and mobile offerings. Smile Group also helped Neo@Ogilvy to create a global media delivery hub to service their global operations.

Investments

Smile Group enables entrepreneurship by investing in promising companies. Some of their investments are listed below:

• LetsBuy is an online electronics retailer founded in 2009 by Hitesh Dhingra and Amanpreet Bajaj. Manish Vij, one of the founders of the Smile Group, was an angel investor in the startup. LetsBuy received $6 million in funding from Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners, and Tiger Global. In 2012, Flipkart acquired LetsBuy.

• LittleEyeLabs is a startup that has created a software tool to analyze the performance of Android-based apps. The start-up was acquired by Facebook in 2014 just after 18 months of its inception. According to media reports, the deal was finalized in the range of $10 million to $15 million.

Other noteworthy investments made by Smile Group includes Scoop Whoop, HackerEarth, Rapido, The Man Company, TrulyMadly, YumLane, Capabiliti, Hostmaker, Biryani By Kilo, Eleve Media, and more.

Controversies and Criticisms

Smile Group was one of the first to enter into India's e-commerce market with the incubation of Fashion And You and other online retail firms. But in spite of being an early entrant into the e-commerce market, these firms were unable to compete with emerging rival companies such as Flipkart, Myntra and Jabong.

References

This article "Smile Group" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Smile Group. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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