Goodbox acquires SmartPocket to make SMEs e-commerce ready

Bangalore-headquartered Goodbox, a conversational m-commerce company enabling SMEs to become e-commerce ready, has now acquired SmartPocket for an undisclosed amount.

Significantly, Goodbox had recently announced its Series A funding of $2.5 million from marquee investor Nexus Venture Partners.

SmartPocket, co-founded by Kiran Shastri and Mayank Shah, started off as a mobile app that allowed customers to digitise their loyalty cards. They were recently working towards making SmartPocket the online wallet for customers to make online payments, place orders with offline partners as well as store all their virtual cards in one place.

Both Shastri and Shah will now be joining the leadership team at Goodbox post acquisition.

The acquisition would come in handy to Goodbox, which enables small businesses to become e-commerce ready, on the Goodbox app, within minutes by providing seamless discovery, ordering and payment. Consumers can buy directly, over messaging, from their trusted stores across multiple categories without having to download multiple apps.

“The SmartPocket team is very talented and tenacious. During our discussions with them, we realized we share a similar vision and it made sense to join forces to empower millions of SMEs to come online. We are building very strong mobile capabilities and this is a step towards that objective. We are very excited to be building Goodbox along with them,” said Abey Zachariah, CEO & co-founder of Goodbox.

Kiran Shastri, CEO & co-founder, SmartPocket, on his parts, said, “We are excited about joining the team at Goodbox. We have a shared vision and now a shared goal. At SmartPocket, we wanted to create a marketplace with a focus on repeat business and customer loyalty through a digital wallet. We will now look to bring that mindset, technology and expertise with us into Goodbox. There is a clear need among businesses for a platform that enables them to sell on mobile and Goodbox is catering to that need -while it creates one of the largest consumer platforms that enable them to buy directly from their trusted businesses on a single app.”