Cookpad buys Bengaluru-based startup Cucumbertown

Cookpad, a Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed recipe network, has acquired Bengaluru-based online recipe-blogging startup Cucumbertown for an undisclosed sum, making its entry into the Indian market.

"It is a fairly large deal," said Cherian Thomas, co-founder of Cucumbertown. He, however, declined to share the size of the transaction.

Established in 1997, Cookpad currently has over two million recipes created by a user base of 25 million. The $100-million company is expected to work with Cucumbertown on a global culinary map. Cucumbertown, which has eight employees in Bengaluru and one in the US, will remain as an independent subsidiary under Cookpad.

Cucumbertown was founded in October 2012 by Cherian Thomas, a former Zynga employee, his friend Arun Prabhakar from Bengaluru, Chris Luscher, a partner at Zurich-based designing firm Information Architects, and Dan Hauk, a Tumblr theme designer and co-founder of BrewTracker from Reading, Pennsylvania.

Cucumbertown had in 2012 raised $300,000 from angel investors like AngelList's Naval Ravikant and FarmVille co-creator Sizhao Yang, followed by an undisclosed amount in a Series-A round onding from Helion Venture Partners and Ludlow Ventures.