Airbnb acquires two startups to boost its appeal among users

Airbnb, the online accommodation startup announced that it is acquiring London based Accomable, a startup that focuses on house listings that are disabled-friendly. Both the companies did not reveal the details of the acquisition.

Accomable currently hosts bookings for 1,100 properties in 60 countries, with staff picking accommodation offering features such as wheelchair access, hoists, and roll-in showers. Srin Madipalli, co-founder of Accomable, said demand for Accomable's homes had outgrown its small team. "We were looking for a way to scale what we do and we wanted a technology platform who had the infrastructure we needed," he said.

Airbnb said it hired Accomable and most of its staff because Airbnb itself wanted to build its wheelchair-accessible housing inventory and provide complete and accurate information to disabled people. The company said it will add features so homeowners can detail in their listings whether their homes have stairs or an elevator, doorways, and bathrooms wide enough to fit a wheelchair and showers with handlebar or chair.

For now, Madipalli is the only one who is relocating to San Fransisco while the rest of the team will continue to work from London.

Additionally, the company has also acquired AdBasis an adtech startup which has built a platform and dashboard for ad testing and optimization. AdBasis was co-founded by Jason Puckett and Joe Divitta in Chicago and describes itself as a controlled testing environment and analytics tool for companies to conduct A/B and multivariate tests on search, display, and mobile ads.