Yahoo has reportedly purchased the Bangalore-based tech startup, Bookpad, less than a year after it was formed.
Conflicting reports have been made about the price of the deal, with The Economic Times claiming the Sunnyvale, California-based company bought Bookpad for $8.3 million, and The Times of India saying the deal is worth just under $15 million. The Economic Times adds that the acquisition is Yahoo's first purchase of an Indian startup.
Bookpad was founded one year ago by three Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni, Niketh Sabbineni, Aditya Bandi and Ashwik Reddy, who created the Docspad platform to provide better ways for developers to view and edit content online, ZDNet reported.
Developers are also able to integrate different cloud-based services to use in an app, such as document hosting, viewing, editing, and annotation. Docspad also comes with support for a range of document formats, such as Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel, PDF, ODT, ODP, ODX and ePub 2.0, as well as image formats.
"We built Docspad for a singular purpose; any app out there that deals with documents should be able to let the users open, edit and collaborate on those documents, from right inside the app," Bandi, CEO of Bookpad, wrote in a blog post. "With Doscpad, we're helping to build a web where no one needs to download any document."
Docspad is also not limited in the kind of devices it can work with, according to The Times of India. It also doesn't need downloads of desktop software or plug-ins.
Bookpad was created at the Startup Warehouse in Bangalore, a space provided by Information Technology firm NASSCOM and the Karnataka government.
Sabbineni reportedly met with Yahoo executives in the U.S. in May of last year to begin discussing the deal, ZDNet reported. One source familiar with the situation said the agreement will have the Bookpad team moving to Silicon Valley.
"Getting acquired by Yahoo puts Bangalore on the global startup map," said Srivatsa Krishna, secretary of the Karnataka government. "We will do anything it takes to match Silicon Valley and become the world's favorite startup hub."
The deal, which has yet to be officially confirmed, follows nine months after Facebook's purchase of fellow Bangalore-based startup Little Eye Labs.
