Monster snaps up Jobsahead

By siliconindia staff writer   |   Tuesday, 25 May 2004, 19:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: In yet another megabucks deal on India’s M&A Street, the New Delhi-headquartered recruitment portal jobsahead.com has struck paydirt by being acquired by its global competitor, the Hyderabad-based monster.com, reports Economic Times. Jobsahead.com, which focusses on tech recruitment will now be owned by monster.com’s Indian arm. The buyout is a Rs 40-crore all-cash deal, which ensures complete exit for the current owners of jobsahead.com. Monster will acquire a company named Webneuron Services, which runs jobsahead.com. The key monetary beneficiaries are, of course, the original promoters of the company – among whom are Puneet Dalmia and Alok Mittal – and the VCs who invested in the company, primary among them being ChrysCapital. Chrys – formerly Chrysalis - has invested between Rs 20 crore and Rs 25 crore in the company, amounting to 75 per cent of its equity. Its share of the price – Rs 30 crore – signals a smart, if not fabulous – return on its investment. For ChrysCapital, this is the second major exit-for-profit in the tech space, after piloting the sale of call centre company Spectramind to Wipro earlier. Dalmia, a scion of the Dalmia business family, will obviously be a major beneficiary, as will members of the senior management at jobsahead.com and other investors, whose collective ownership amounts to about 25 per cent. Jobsahead.com was one of the early entrants in India’s e-recruitment space, where it competes primarily with naukri.com. The acquisition marks a major consolidation move in an industry that doesn’t have too many players to begin with. The collective marketshare of the new company could be as high as 60 per cent. Integration of operations is likely to take another three or four months, while the deal has been about three months in the making. The CEO of Monster’s Indian operations, Arun Tadanki, is tipped to run jobsahead.com as well.

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