How to Announce to the World That You've Been Acquired.

Usually mergers and acquisitions are bad news. In fact, they aren't news. You get to hear about them through gossip from the industry grapevine. The gossip causes stock prices to fluctuate, gives undue anxiety to employees of the two parent companies and if the merger does go through, it often see a lot of employees get the pink slip. But in the current startup climate, mergers are usually a good deal. The smaller startup usually makes a lot of money, gets heft and scale, even a bigger office. And the best part, we get to see some really clever announcements from the brands involved..

And one of my favourite merger announcements of all time is this one. Snapdeal acquired my favourite Indian mobile startup Freecharge and they made their merger look like a marriage proposal.

On-brand, cheeky and a whole lot of fun.