Smile Group

Updated on Dec 22, 2023

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Type of business Private No. of locations New Delhi, India Key people Harish Bahl Founder Harish Bahl		Available in English Area served India Website smile.co.in Founded 1999

Harish bahl of smile group at entrepreneur india 2012

SMILE is India’s largest consortium of companies engaged in the e-commerce and ITES sector.

Smile group funny boys

History

SMILE Group is India's largest consortium of companies, founded in 1999 by Harish Bahl and headquartered in New Delhi, India. Smile Group, formerly known as StudioSmile started its operation as a small web shop from a garage. The business primarily focused on incubating new web companies.

In 2004, SMILE Group incubated with Quasar (a digital media agency) later on, Quasar's 75% stacks were sold to WPP (a multinational advertising and public relation company)

In 2006, SMILE Group raised three companies: Tyroo Media, an Internet Advertising Company. Creons, a retailed infrastructure company. Zoomtra, a travel focused meta search engine. In 2007, Yahoo! acquired a minority stake in Tyroo. StudioSmile relaunched itself as SMILE Group for any future incubation.

In 2009, SMILE Group launched SQUAD, a digital agency in partnership with WPP and ScanGroup.

Also, it incubated FashionAndYou, a leading fashion and lifestyle online store which raised $48 Million from Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Nokia Growth Partners.

In 2011. SMILE Group launched FreeCultr, a leading premium lifestyle apparel store in association with Sequoia Capital and Ru.Net.It. The company also co-founded the incubator called SpringStar and it became globalization partner for AirBNB.

Also, in 2011, Quasar and GroupM integrated all their brands into one partnership.

In 2012, the company founded SeventyNine, a mobile advertisement network which was later sold to Bertelssman.

Also in 2012, Tyroo acquired DGM India to become the number one ad marketing one player in India.

Additionally, Juvalia & You was backed by SMILE Group.

In 2013, SMILE Group entered into joint venture with Ogilvy India to support its performance marketing, e-commerce and mobile offerings.

Ventures

SMILE Group ventures is largely divided in four groups: Owned Brands, E-Commerce, Digital Media and International Partnerships.

Owned Brands

FreeCultr, a lifestyle brand offering casuals across top wear, footwear, bottom wear and accessories for men and women. The company introduced innovative products such as The Henley and colored bottom wears, which helped the company to mark a strong appearance in the Indian market. Its mobile application, TapShop received the 'Most Innovative Retail Concept' Award.

Juvalia, an online store focused on social selling of fashion jewellery.

E-Commerce

FashionAndYou, a leading Indian online store and fashion retailer.

Digital Media

SVG Media, formerly Tyroo Media, an Internet Advertisement Company. In November 2013, SVG Media became 4th largest reach vehicle with its expanded reach of 40.9 million unique visitors. In February 2014, as per comScore, SVG Media moved ahead to become the second largest ad network in India following Google.

Quasar, the largest digital media entity in India.

SQUAD, a joint venture between SMILE Group, Quasar(Part of WPP Digital) and ScanGroup.

International Partnerships

AirBNB partnerships with SMILE Group for Internationalization.

Katalyzers: SMILE group's $100M partnership with TPG Growth that will help companies in the marketplace, classified listings, local commerce, digital media, e-commerce and mobile space roll-out their businesses across Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa.

References

Smile Group Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA