Mahindra Partners may acquire BabyOye.com

Mahindra Partners, the business arm of the diversified conglomerate Mahindra Group, is said to be negotiating a deal to acquire online portal BabyOye. Group’s retail arm already has strong online and offline presence through Mom & Me. Mahindra Retail operates over 100 Mom & Me and Beanstalk stores, which earned revenues of Rs 206 crores and a loss of Rs 114 crores in fiscal year 2014, according to the group's annual report. The unit is part of Mahindra Partners, which houses all the emerging businesses of the group such as logistics, media, education and solar.

Babyoye set up by Sanjay Nadkarni and his wife Arunima Singhdeo, has so far raised venture funding of around Rs 90 crores from Accel Partners, Helion Venture Partners and Tiger Global Management. In April 2013, it acquired rival portal Hoopos in an all-stock deal. The portal sells products such as diapers, kid's apparel, toys and maternity care products. It clocked gross merchandise value (GMV) of around Rs 5 crores a month last year and is expected to record annual sales of Rs 250 crores by 2015.

In August this year, Mahindra brought in Prakash Wakankar from its private equity arm Mahindra Partners to replace K Venkataraman as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company. After launching its retail arm in 2009, Mahindra Retail carried out rapid retail expansion opening over 140 stores but realized that the demand was not as strong as the company expected.