Yahoo! Slurps! Indian! Google! Docs! Lookalike!

Devs pack bags to move to Silicon Valley

Yahoo! has picked up Bangalore company Bookpad in a deal described as strengthening the Yahoo! Mail service.

Bookpad is responsible for a service called Docspad, an online file editing operation, which would give the Purple Palace a little bit of the kind of functionality people have learned to expect from competitors like Gmail.

According to the India Times, the deal is worth about US$8.3 million, and the company's team will be shifting the development team to Silicon Valley “soon”.

India Times says the deal had its origins in the InnoTrek business delegation to Silicon Valley in May 2014, when founder Niketh Sabbineni first met with Yahoo! officials.

Docspad is an HTML5-based app for desktops and mobiles, designed to support a wide range of document formats, collaborative document create-edit, and integration with other business apps. It also targets third party developers, by letting them embed its capabilities in their apps.

Nasscom, the industry association for India's software industry, sees the deal as evidence of growing US interest in Indian startups, particularly in Bangalore, as acquisition targets. Other recent M&A activity in Bangalore include Facebook's January slurp of Eye Labs, which produces a tool to analyse the performance of Android applications. ®