MapmyIndia buys stake in Kogo to build travel & hyper-local discovery
Kogo is a gamified social travel commerce
MapmyIndia, a leading provider of advanced digital maps and deep-tech products & platforms, says it is acquiring 26.37 pc stake in Kogo Tech Labs Private Limited, a cutting-edge start-up aiming to build the world’s largest travel & hyper-local discovery, recommendations, commerce, social and gamified platform, for USD 1.25 million, with the option to raise stake to 50 pc in two years.
According to a press statement, by integrating Kogo’s gamified travel, outdoors and hyper-local content, community & commerce platform into the Mappls N-CASE suite, MapmyIndia will now enable automotive OEMs in India and globally to increase consumer engagement, brand loyalty and in-vehicle commerce monetisation opportunities.
Kogo was launched in February 2020, with its strong community-building and engagement platform for travel and has received significant interest from automotive OEMs, who can drive post sales engagement & build communities and engagement around their brands, says the press statement. Kogo is a gamified social travel commerce platform where users earn Kogocoin as they step out and travel, and can spend these on hotels, experiences, services, accessories and stores on the Kogo marketplace, which has over 800,000 vendors. Kogo’s solutions are already integrated into Bajaj Auto KTM, Mahindra Classic Legends Yezdi, and MG Motor Hector.
“We are happy to have MapmyIndia Mappls as our strategic investors and partners as we build on our vision to offer the world’s largest social travel commerce platform. Our goal is to ensure that Kogo is the go-to platform for automotive OEMs that give their users an experience of connecting with like-minded people via our community and discovering new places and experiences in an engaging and unique gamified format. Kogo will benefit through integration with MapmyIndia Mappls best-in-class maps, navigation, N-CASE & geospatial technologies and IoT, Internet of Things to help us build something unique and working with them on go-to-market will help us scale rapidly. There is a lot more planned as part of the partnership for the future, that will also deliver integration solutions & apps to consumers, the travel eco-system, brands, businesses, and government. We are excited to progressively unveil our vision for travel, outdoors, hyper-local, social and gamification, in the time to come,” say Raj K Gopalakrishnan, co-founder & CEO, Kogo, and Praveer Kochhar, co-founder.
“Building world-class digital maps & technologies and delivering their positive benefits to everyone through infinite use cases has been our core mission and conviction in India since the last 27 years through MapmyIndia, and now globally, through our global platform and brand, Mappls. We are excited to welcome and join hands with Kogo to boost and enable the next-generation of travel, outdoors, hyper-local and on-the go experiences and use cases for everyone. Not just does this strategic investment and business partnership deepen MapmyIndia’s automotive OEM portfolio and open up larger multi-billiondollar addressable markets for the company, but it helps us deliver on the innate needs and aspiration of all people to travel and experience the world in better and more ways. We are very excited about Kogo’s prospects to grow into a very large business and happy to partner with Raj and Praveer, two visionary, passionate and seasoned entrepreneurs, to build something wonderful for the world,” say Rakesh Verma, Chairman and Managing Director, MapmyIndia and Rohan Verma, CEO & Executive Director.
