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Dec 02 2010 5:53pm EDT

eBay Buys Into College Entrepreneur's Shopping Concept

Jack Abraham has entrepreneurship in his blood. His father built and sold comScore. Now, the younger Abraham, who is in his 20s and still a student at Wharton, has sold his local shopping site Milo to eBay for a reported $75 million.

Abraham took to his Twitter feed to confirm the news, writing: "It's official. Milo.com is extremely excited to join the eBay family!!"

TechCrunch said investors in the site, including 25 percent owner True Ventures, based in Palo Alto, California, "made a killing."

Milo, also based in Palo Alto, works with retailers to help them lure shoppers into local stores by keeping track of inventory on the shelf in real time. Its mission "is to bring every product on every shelf of every store in the physical world onto the Internet," Milo says on its website.

ebay's acquisition of the company brings more attention to the growing interest in location-based shopping. Google is reportedly in talks to buy Groupon for up to $6 billion, and Amazon is reportedly interested in buying Living Social.

As far as Abraham's schoolwork is concerned, the grade for this term is an A-plus.


Get more business intelligence from Portfolio.com:

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Steve Rosenbush is the blogs/industry editor for Portfolio.com.

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