TVS Finance to acquire auctionindia.com

CHENNAI: TVS Finance, the investment arm of the TVS group of companies, will

sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Chennai-based Cyber Commerce for

the acquisition of Auction India, which owns the B2B auction portal www.auctionindia.com.

The acquisition would be a cash-cum-stock deal.

The portal, auctionindia.com, launched in 1999, provides pricing solutions,

or ‘auctions’ to create an online market place for industrial assets, raw

scrap, equipment, machinery, plants and industrial units. In addition, it also

provides classified listing services for customers in accordance to the sale or

purchase requirements for machines and materials and active matchmaking for a

fee. It was the recipient of the Beacon Award at Lotusphere 2000.

"Through the acquisition, we intend to become active in the industrial

B2B market space, focusing on the small and micro industries helping them in

sale and purchase deals," said TVS Finance director Gopal Srinivasan. Cyber

Commerce has invested a substantial amount in auctionindia, which has carried

out 50 auctioning sessions worth Rs 12 crore in the last 18 months. TVS Finance

would fund the working capital for auctionindia for another six months.

"The brand name of TVS will help us in boosting the magnitude of

business being conducted. With the public sector companies realizing the

importance of the Internet technology, we expect our market to grow

further," said Cyber Commerce director R Shiv Kumar. "Though we will

continue to be the technology partners for auctionindia, the intellectual

property rights will rest with TVS Finance and it would pay a royalty of about

5-10 per cent of the sales proceeds to Cyber Commerce," he added.