News Corp Acquires BigDecisions.Com

The acquisition of BigDecisions.com includes the site's parent company, FinDirect Services. The co-founders will now help the expansion of the team and its consumer offerings.

News Corp has announced its acquisition of BigDecisions.com, a Mumbai-based financial decision making portal. The acquisition of BigDecisions.com includes the site's parent company, FinDirect Services.

Robert Thomson, chief executive, NewsCorp, says, "BigDecisions.com will help Indians make the most important decisions by using accurate information tailored to their personal needs. This platform will be high quality, privacy-protected and easy-to-use."

BigDecisions.com helps Indian consumers make 'smarter' financial decisions through interactive, decision-making tools powered by sophisticated algorithms and data. It aims to provide a platform to deliver unbiased information and analysis to consumers.

At present, BigDecisions covers financial planning segments like housing, life insurance, health insurance, education, retirement planning and refinance. Its partners include FundsIndia.com, Policybazaar, Paisabazaar and Medimanage.

Manish Shah and Gaurav Roy set up the portal in early 2013 and it operated until recently as bigdecisions.in. According to the company, the platform has already helped 40,000 users make better-informed decisions.

Following the acquisition, both co-founders will help oversee a significant expansion of the BigDecisions.com team as well as its consumer offerings. They will report to Raju Narisetti, senior vice president, strategy, NewsCorp.

Shah, an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad, has worked for a decade with Citigroup in India and the US, in a wide range of roles in the unsecured lending, wealth management and mortgage businesses. In his last role, he was head of new initiatives with AEGON Religare Life Insurance.

Roy is an alumnus of IIT Bombay and XLRI Jamshedpur, with experience in management consulting, financial services and technology. He has worked at Arthur Andersen, KPMG, Wipro, Bharti AXA, and AEGON Religare.

NewsCorp's investment follows its announcement in November that it had acquired a 25 per cent stake in PropTiger.com, a residential real estate platform that also provides accurate and independent data and information to India's homebuyers.

NewsCorp's other operations in India include Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, Factiva and HarperCollins Publishers businesses. NewsCorp is a global, diversified media and information services company focused on creating and distributing authoritative and engaging content to consumers throughout the world. The company's businesses range across media - including news and information services, book publishing, cable network programming in Australia, digital real estate services, digital education, and pay-TV distribution in Australia. Headquartered in New York, the activities of NewsCorp are conducted primarily in the US, Australia, and the UK.