Social Books Site Site Ugenie Bought By U.S. Company Lulu
By Rafat Ali - Sun 17 Aug 2008 10:09 PM PST
Indians-founded Ugenie, a books-focused social-shopping site using Web 2.0 tools and features, and primarily-based in Bangalore, has been bought by U.S.-based self-publishing site Lulu, reports Venturebeat, confirming rumors that came out earlier in the month. UGenie received $5 million from venture capital firms Blue Run Ventures and Sierra Ventures in 2006. The company was founded in May 2006 by two ex-Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) engineers—Krishna Motukuri and Harish Abbot. The company also runs WeRead, a social book discovery site.
PluggdIn has summary of company’s changed startegy after the funding: It landed up in a trouble over the lawsuit by US’s largest wholesaler of higher education textbooks, Follett Education Group (efollet.com) for “scooping up vast quantities of data” - i.e. accessing Follett’s systems via bots without any prior agreement. The lawsuit probably made them change their strategy and they shifted from being a shopping comparison engine to social app for book readers.
Earlier in the month, it announced a deal with Lulu for WeRead, where self-published authors through WeRead could be part of the Lulu book store..turns out the deal ended up in an acquisition.
Posted in: Mergers & Acquisitions
