Groupon Acquires Ajit Co-Founded Adku

San Francisco: San Francisco based ecommerce data startup Adku has been acquired by daily deals company Groupon. “Our team will be relocating to Groupon’s Palo Alto office and will be working on new project initiatives based on our background in big data and personalization. We hope to accelerate and improve upon applications utilizing Groupon’s vast amount of data and scale,” says Ajit Varma, Co-Founder & CEO, Adku.

Adku was co-founded by Ajit Varma, Carlos Whitt, and Jesse Shieh in 2010, owing to their interest in big data and a desire to create products that would instantly give users a personalized experience. It had previously secured funding from Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, True Ventures, and AngelPad.

Prior to co-founding Adku, Varma was the Group Product Manager at Google, Product manager-Category, Search, and Attributes at eBay; Software Engineer and Manager- Technology Practice at Deloitte; and an Analyst at Accenture. He pursued his BS in Electronics Engineering from University of Texas, Austin. “We are looking forward to joining forces with Groupon to have an impact on millions of users and to share in Groupon’s vision of reshaping local commerce,” adds Varma.

Talking about Groupon’s interest in the startup, Julie Mossler, Spokesperson, Groupon says, “Adku describes itself as a stealth startup looking to revolutionize ecommerce. Such strong product technologists and engineers add great value to the development team we are continuing to grow in our Palo Alto office.”