BI Year Ender: Five surprising startup acquisitions in 2016

The online travel sector is riddled with multiple players now, compared to when only MakeMyTrip was the major player in this sector, a few years back. MMT announced the Goibibo acquisition in September, making it the biggest group in this sector with a valuation of $1.8 billion. The deal is supposedly going to be closed by this year for $720 million.

Naspers-backed PayU Global acquiring Citrus Pay from Bombay was the biggest deal in fin-tech space this year. PayU got Citrus Pay for a good $150 Mn, which might just be more than worth it after the government's demonetization move.

Oyo Rooms acquired Zo Rooms in another case of the first getting to the second. The hotel aggregator chain became a serious player this year in the online hotel industry. Oyo Rooms has got an investment of $187.65 million, till now. The deal went through at a 7% share swap, for the transfer of Zo's assets and inclusion of some of its employees in OYO's payroll.

In the e-commerce sector we saw Firstcry becoming the biggest baby-products selling company with its acquisition of BabyOye from Mahindra & Mahindra in October. FirstCry has now been valued at $300-350 million, according to sources. The deal will nearly double its valuation from about $155-160 million last year.