Consumer electronics startup Essential Products, founded by the creator of Android Andy Rubin, has acquired email startup CloudMagic.
An Essential Products spokeswoman confirmed the CloudMagic acquisition, but declined to share further details, the Mint Newspaper reported.
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“We are always on the lookout for companies with great technology and talent to help accelerate our product roadmap,” Essential Products said in an email to The Mint.
CloudMagic was launched in 2013, with a free email service across all platforms. In 2016, the product was relaunched as Newton Mail, as a premium, paid-for subscription-based email app. Newton Mail quickly acquired a niche following, with more than 40,000 paid subscribers.
However, the app failed to compete against larger established companies in the sector, such as Google and Microsoft.
“It was a tough business decision. We explored various business models but couldn’t successfully figure out profitability & growth over the long term. It was hard. The market for premium consumer mail apps is not big enough, and it faces stiff competition from high-quality free apps from Google, Microsoft, and Apple. We put up a hard and honest fight, but it was not enough to overcome the bundling & platform default advantages enjoyed by the large tech companies,” CloudMagic founder and serial entrepreneur Rohit Nadhani told Medium in August this year.
CloudMagic was incubated as a part of a Bengaluru-based company Webyog, which built tools for database management. It was spun off as a separate company in 2013.
Webyog was acquired by business software firm Idera for an undisclosed amount, earlier this year.