Tata dials up another acquisition talk – with India’s discovery platform Just Dial, whose stock is up by 7%

• The acquisition talks come as Tata is set to be working on its own Super App for which it has reportedly signed a deal with grocery retail platform BigBasket for a 68% stake.
• The news of the possible acquisition drove JD’s stocks to ₹943, up by 7%.
• In October 2020, JD had said that it was set to launch its own B2B (business to business) marketplace called JD Mart.

The salt-to-aviation conglomerate Tata Group is in talks with Just Dial, the 24-year old local discovery platform, as a part of its digital push, reported ET. The report said that the group is in early talks with Just Dial regarding its latest e-commerce bet – JD Mart.

The acquisition talks come as Tata is set to be working on its own Super App, for which it has already reportedly signed a deal with grocery retail platform BigBasket for a 68% stake. Similarly, it could enter into a strategic alliance with Just Dial as well.

The news of the possible acquisition drove Just Dial Ltd’s stocks to ₹943, up by 7.38% at 1.50 pm on Monday.

In October 2020, Just Dial had said that it was set to launch its own B2B (business to business) marketplace called JD Mart. The potential and excitement for Just Dial’s new platform comes with the fact that the company already has a strong foothold in the market and a loyal user base.

According to a report by financial services firm UBS, the company will be able to leverage its already existing 140 million quarterly unique users and 100,000 paid B2B subscribers to sell JD Mart. “We think Just Dial has developed a superior platform on the backdrop of an interactive user interface along with robust depth and breadth of B2B product offerings. JD's core strength is its large sales force (9,000), which should aid monetizing the new platform,” said the UBS report from October, 2020.

JD Mart finds competition from the country’s oldest e-commerce platform IndiaMart, which has had an unchallenged run for 24 years. Interestingly, Tata was reportedly in talks with IndiaMart as well earlier. However, in an exchange filing IndiaMart had categorically denied that it had not had any discussions with Tata Group.

Meanwhile, JD Mart is making space for itself. The company, which had set aside ₹110 crore for marketing and advertising of JD Mart, has signed up to be a ‘Co-Presenting Sponsor’ of the Indian Premier League-14 (IPL 2021), which will be held in the months of April and May.

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