PVR to acquire SPI Cinemas

PVR is one of the cinema chains in India. The company began as a joint venture between Priya Exhibitors Private Limited and Village Roadshow Limited in 1995 and began their commercial operations in 1997, headquartered in Gurgaon, India. SPI Cinemas is an Indian Multiplex and film production company owned by SPI Group, headquartered in Chennai, India. It is originally named as Sathyam Cinemas.

The PVR Group seems set to acquire SPI Cinemas for 750-1000 crore, in what could end up as biggest deal in India Multiplex sector. The SPI Group currently runs a cinema exhibition, distribution, and production business. It has five brands of theatres named as Sathyam, Escape, The Cinema, S2 Cinemas, and Luxe. The group operates around 56 screens, mainly in Tamil Nadu and within a few in Andhra Pradesh.

PVR, with 454 screens in 102 locations across 43 cities, is the largest cinema exhibitor in terms of screens. Of these, 204 screens are in western India, 133 in the north, 98 in the south, and 19 in the east. If PVR acquires this asset, it would be a good acquisition because it intends to double its capacity in the next four-five years. PVR and Inox Leisure Ltd, India’s second largest cinema operator in terms of screens, together command close to 50% of the screens in India’s multiplex sector.

With more number of smart cities and malls, there is a open area for companies to expand. Last year, Inox acquired Delhi based Satyam Cineplexes Ltd for Rs. 182 Cr. With this Inox expanded its presence to 50 cities, with 91 multiplexes and 358 screens. In 2007, Inox acquired Calcutta Cine Pvt. Ltd, and in 2010, it acquired Fame India Ltd. In November 2012, PVR had acquired Mumbai headquartered Cinemax Ltd from its promoters for Rs. 395 Crore.

Google to buy Softcard

Google is reportedly is in talks to purchase Softcard, a mobile payments service in direct competition with Apple Pay, sparkling speculation the company may be readying itself to take on the consumer electronics giant. If the deal pushes through, Google will be paired with the biggest carriers in the United States in its bid to challenge the Apple Pay service in the burgeoning mobile payments industry.

Softcard is owned by AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile USA, but is currently searching for a buyer after making more than 60 employees redundant. Google offered $50 Million for the company, while PayPal and Microsoft have also reportedly expressed interest. Google Mobile payment service, Wallet was somewhat ahead of curve but has not made the impact the company may have hoped after key telecommunications companies, such as Verizon.

Softcard is taking steps to reduce costs and strengthen its business. This includes simplifying the company organizational structure and consolidating all operations into its Dallas and New York offices, which involves across the company. According to reports, Apple Pay could arrive in the UK in the first half of 2015, after the service US release back in the October 2014.

Google original vision for Wallet included a closed loop advertising system that would use purchases in physical stores to improve the targeting of digital ads. The plan was to share some of this ad revenue with the wireless carriers, but the companies could not agree on how to do that. A Google acquisition of Softcard could revive these types of advertising deals and put Google and the telecom companies in a better position to compete with Apple Pay. 

iKaaz launches mobile payment platform

Bangalore-based mobile payments solutions provider, iKaaz Software Pvt Ltd has launched a platform to facilitate quick and easy payments for enterprises as well as consumers. iKaaz consumers wallet offers banks, operators, and merchants a mobile wallet to their customers, while its consumer centric platform iKaaz M-POS can replace expensive POS equipment with just a feature phone that settles payments electronically.

The company also offers an app, Tap & Pay, using which a bank account holder can initiate money transfers and consumers can complete merchant transactions and pay bills using their mobile phones. With this app, which leverages NFC technology, merchants can receive payments from customers with just a tap of a phone at the checkout terminal.

On the one hand, customers can transform their mobile phones into a mobile wallet using a smart iKaaz NFC tag and complete payments faster at merchant locations. On the other hand, merchants can benefit by significantly by reducing the transaction processing fees. Developed by domain experts with many years of experience in the mobile payments space, iKaaz is head quartered in Bangalore and caters to customers across the globe. It has offices in Washington the US and Nairobi in Kenya.

Last year, iKaaz has expanded into Kenya. For the same, the company had collaborated with Family Bank, one of the leading banks in the country. As the part of partnership, iKaaz will provide the customers of Family bank with its Near Field Communication (NFC) and Bluetooth powered contactless payments through Tap and Pay method. The software provider was also in talks to raise $10 M from Brand capital, which will be used for expansion in India for a new product.

Pinterest acquires Kosei

Facebook knows who you were. Google knows what you want now. Now, Pinterest yearns to know what you want next, which is exactly why it acquired recommendation engine startup Kosei. For an undisclosed figure, Pinterest gets Kosei tech that understands 400 Million relationships between 30 Million products, and the majority of its 10-person team including its co-founders.

Kosei team will spend their first 90 days figuring out where to apply them across black ops spam deterrence, product discovery and recommendations, visual object recognition, ad click prediction for monetization, growth analytics, and building a machine learning system on spark for Pinterest data team. It can supercharge Pinterest existing graph to help brands reach people at the right moments and improve content for pinners.

Kosei products allowed customers to make better product recommendations on their sites, apps, and in ads. By looking at what user had browsed or purchased previously, Kosei machine-learning engine could compare that against commerce data sets, and predict what someone was most likely to want to buy next.

From improving the accuracy of its ad targeting to recommending better pins to appear on user’s home pages, machine learning is crucial to Pinterest future. While companies like Google get easy cues like search queries to determine what people want to see, Pinterest has to bet based on what it knows about people from their past behaviour. However, with the right machine learning algorithms, user next favorite recipe, watch, or, quote could be waiting on the Pinterest home page.

Twitter to acquire ZipDial

Micro blog and social network service Twitter is in talks to buy Bangalore based startup ZipDial. The deal is said to be closed to $30 Million- $40 Million. ZipDial offers a unique marketing solution where consumers can give missed calls to a number to engage with an advertising brand. If the deal works out, ZipDial would be Twitter’s first acquisition in India.

The basic functionality of this startup revolves around people who call numbers, but hang up before the call is answered. This simple alert then becomes the basic for a number of other, commercial actions, and analytics to track everything. This proves beneficial to Twitter, who can try to engage with users who do not log into Twitter. ZipDial founded by Valarie Wagoner, Amiya Pathak, and Sanjay Swamy in 2010, has been working with Twitter for a while.

In past, it entered into a partnership with Twitter India to allow those without the Internet or smartphone to follow superstars by giving a missed call to a particular number. User could later engage with the actor by “tweeting” through SMS. It offers a service for users to dial/hang up on a number to activate receiving a tweet stream from a specific Twitter account. Last year, Facebook also announced the use of missed calls for generating leads from their ads for customers. The entire service was run and design by ZipDial.

It could be data play for Twitter, as mobile advertising becomes a big revenue earner for the company. ZipDial brings in user preferences for brands in tier 2 and tier 3 cities where smartphones are yet to make an entry. Earlier Twitter had acquired mobile advertising startup Namo Media last year. The combined platform will improve the social media power’s ability to deliver ‘native ads’ promotional material that blends into mobile apps and mobile websites.

French BlaBlaCar enter in India

One of France biggest startups and amongst the world’s largest carpool companies wants to revolutionize the way Indians Travel. BlaBlaCar, the city-to-city ridesharing service available across Europe, Russia, and Turkey, has arrived in India on January 14, 2015. The company is opening its ninth office in the capital city and it had plans to expand into India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

As in its other 13 other markets in which over two million people use its service, BlaBlaCar lets drivers offers ride from one city to another, and share the cost with co-travelers who sign up for the journey making the trip more affordable than traveling separately. It has launched services in Delhi and Gurgaon on Wednesday. India is the first stop in Asia, for the 10-year-old company that has built an online community of 10 Million across 13 countries so far.

Last July, it received $100 Million in funding from a slew of investors including Accel Partners and Index Ventures, when it first announced its interest in emerging markets including India, Brazil, and Turkey. Unlike taxi aggregators who have been asked to register as radio taxi operators, carpooling services in India are not bound by regulation yet. Brazil Tripda, which is backed by German Incubator Rocket Internet, launched its Indian operations last November by offering ride sharing between cities. Meanwhile, a number of local players like RidingO, SmartMumbaikar, and ZingHopper, offer similar services in India.

BlaBlaCar, which draws its quirky name from one of the features that users display on their profile on the company’s platform, expects users to log in using their Facebook profile. They can often choose the driver they want to ride with based on profiles. In Spain, Poland, and France, BlaBlaCar charges an 11% commission on each ride per person. In India too, commuters will have to sign on through their Facebook profile, and book a ride with a driver they are likely to be comfortable with. While the service will be free for the first year, the company will later take a percentage out of every booking.

Facebook buys QuickFire

Facebook, the biggest social media platform in the world had recently bought QuickFire Networks Corp., who delivers video streams over the internet, as the social network makes video delivery a top priority. Facebook is second most watched video platform after YouTube in the world.

QuickFire announced the deal on their website and terms were not disclosed. The San Diego based startup will help Facebook show clips quickly without sacrificing as much of the quality, which will benefit Facebook as it boosts video delivery and expands the feature to emerging markets, where connections are slow.

The amount of video on Facebook news feed more than tripled last year, and the company is planning to tweak the website design so marketers can more easily buy video ads and monitor their campaigns. The efforts are central to the Menlo Park, California based company efforts to tap the US online video advertising market, which EMarketer Inc. estimates will reach $7.8 Billion this year, up 30 percent from $6 Billion in 2014.

One of Facebook main challenge in adding video is to the news feed is whether it will degrade the user experience by making users wait for videos to lead. The company already modifies clips so they can be played more easily, and video advertisements in news feed start automatically as users scroll past, without sound. Facebook has more than 1 Billion daily video views. Some of QuickFire will join Facebook, and the company will wind down operations as it becomes part of the larger company.  

Zomato acquires Urbanspoon

Online restaurant guide Zomato has stepped into lion’s den in the United States with an estimated $60 Million (Rs 370 cr) acquisition of Seattle based food portal Urbanspoon. This deal will bring into direct confrontation with Yelp. This is Zomato sixth acquisition in the last six months and their first in 2015. Zomato is also in talks to raise $100 Million after this deal.

Urbanspoon is an IAC owned restaurant information and recommendation service that operates in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Hence, this acquisition also establishes Zomato presence in Australia and Canada, while adding to its position in United Kingdom and New Zealand. After the acquisition, Zomato will be present in 22 countries across the world. Its restaurant coverage will increase from about 300k restaurants to more than 1 Million restaurants across the globe.

The teams will be working closely over the coming months to integrate Urbanspoon into Zomato. In due course of time, all Urbanspoon traffic will move to Zomato.com, and all Urbanspoon app users will be able to use the Zomato app. This acquisition also has a lot to offer to restaurant business. Zomato hyper local advertising model, combined with the Zomato for Business app suite, will allow restaurant businesses to reach out to, connect with, and engage customers like never before.

This is the biggest acquisition of Zomato in the last six months. It has recently acquired local restaurant search player in New Zealand, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Italy. The startup is likely to be valued at about $1 Billion after completing the fresh round of investment. With their aggressive expansions in the world, investors are planning to invest more in the company. After this acquisition Zomato is in clear competition with Yelp, which is a public listed company and world largest.

Hike Messenger acquires Zip Phone

Hike, the instant messaging (IM) app service from BSB (Bharti Softbank, a joint venture between Bharti Group and Japan’s Softbank), has acquired free voice calling app Zip phone from US based Thought Mechanics Inc for an undisclosed sum. This would also compete with Bharti Airtel own core mobile service. Hike is also competing with SMS service provided by Airtel among other cellular service providers. The venture, however, adds data service earnings to all mobile operators.

The move is expected to expand Hike’s product range in the Internet based communication space. This is the first acquisition by Hike, and is aimed at expanding its products range in the Internet based communication space. Launched by Anuj Jain, Zip Phone is a voice-calling app that can automatically detect one’s contacts, and intelligently routes the call through the Wi-Fi.

Founded by in July 2012 by Kavin Bharti, Hike is a peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging app that uses both data and SMS to deliver messages. Hike is one of the leading mobile apps based out of India with around 35 Million users. Close to 90 percent of its users are Indians aged below 25 years. One of the key features of Hike is that those who do not have Hike on their phones can still receive an Instant message as SMS. One can also respond to it but have to pay normal SMS charges for that.

 Hike is competing with a slew of IM apps that include Whatsapp, which claims to have around 70 Million users in India, besides Facebook Messenger, Viber, Google Talk, and Kakao talk from South Korea, Taiwan Cubie, and LoveByte from Singapore, China WeChat, Japan Line, and Nimbuzz in India. Smartphone makers have their own apps too, such as BlackBerry Ltd Messenger, Apple Inc iMessage, and Samsung Electronics ChatOn. Last September, Hike had secured $65 Million (Rs 400 cr) in funding from a group of overseas investors led by Tiger Global Management. 

Facebook acquires Speech Recognition firm

Facebook Inc acquired wit.ai, a company that makes voice recognition technology for wearable devices and Internet connected appliances, the latest sign of its ambition to extend its reach beyond computers and smartphones. The price for the deal is not disclosed yet. Wit.ai is a company based in Palo Alto, California, which makes software that can understand spoken words as well as written text phrased in “natural language.”

The deal comes as technology companies are racing to bring Internet connectivity to a new crop of devices, from watches to washing machines. Voice recognition, the technology that helps power services such as Apple Inc Siri, is considered a key building block for the new devices to earn mainstream consumer appeal.

Alex Lebrun, Willy Blandin, and Laurent Landowski founded wit.ai. The company announced in October that it had raised $3 Million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. This deal for wit.ai is likely to have been significantly smaller. Facebook rivals Apple Inc, Google Inc, and Microsoft Corp. all have integrated voice recognition technology into their mobile operating systems for smartphones.

Wit.ai technology could allow Facebook users to speak commands that could be converted to text as posts or messages. The technology could have other uses. Facebook already has an optional feature that can recognize music and television shows and encourage users to post about what they are listening to or watching. Facebook mission is to connect everyone and build amazing experiences for the over 1.3 Billion people on the platform technology that understands natural language is a big part of that.

Klarna Eyes Indian Shoppers

Klarna is a Sweden based e-commerce company that provides payment services for online storefronts. Their core service is to assume store claims for payments and handle customer payments, thus estimating the risk for seller and buyer. About 20% of all e-commerce sales in Sweden go through Klarna. The company has stores in seven countries in Europe. There is an office in Israel, which focuses on Research and Development.

European payment provider, which allows consumers to make online purchases using only their e-mail address and postcode with no registration or credit cards, is exploring the possibility of setting up business in India. The Stockholm based company is currently valued at around $1 Billion and active in 16 countries. The company was founded in 2005 by three students at Stockholm school of Economics and has 1,100 employees across the countries, which has its operations.

Klarna integrates the payment methods promising to make online shopping easier. About 35 Million customers have shopped from Klarna and company has 50,000 merchants. The company is focusing on removing friction and hassles from online buying. For using Klarna, there is no need to create an account or a password. Customers can shop using only their email address and postcode. The customers then confirm the purchase before choosing a payment method. Klarna has also introduced Pay after delivery as a Payment option, where the customer has 14 days to pay. This means the customer gets their goods and can make sure they are ok before paying. For this, Klarna gives full guarantee to the customers as well as merchants.

For every purchase, the company also performs a swift background check on customer information based on the speed at which they type their email address and postcode. Klarna claims to be the one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in Europe and having a 10 percent market share of e-commerce in Northern Europe. Klarna is active in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.