Paytm buys Nightstay

Digital payment company Paytm has launched domestic hotel bookings on its platform and has acquired last-minute hotel bookings app Nightstay to expand its travel business. The company will invest upwards of Rs 500 crore for scaling the hotel booking business and expanding its portfolio.

Nightstay Travels Pvt. Ltd was founded in 2015. It procures unsold inventory from hotel owners at a discount and offers the rooms under three categories – boutique, business class and luxury class hotels. It operates on dynamic pricing for partner hotels with inventory being made available for booking every morning. Users can book their stay for up to three days at one go and avail the last-minute deal. It works with hotels in 12 cities across the country.

Paytm aims to leverage Nightstay to expand its portfolio in this vertical. Nightstay had raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A round led by the Indian Angel Network and LetsVenture in May 2017. In August 2015, it had raised $500,000 in a seed round from Bedrock Venture Management Pvt. Ltd.

Paytm Travel, started in 2014, claims to sell over 60 million tickets a year, and offers rail and bus tickets, and flight bookings. Earlier this year, Paytm Travel also started offering foreign exchange bookings for international travellers. The company said it has partnered with over 5,000 hotels across the budget, luxury and business segments. Its partner hotels include Zuri, Sarovar, Treebo, Vresorts, Sterling, Ginger and Bloomrooms.

Google to Fossil Smartwatch Tech

Google and watchmaker Fossil group announced an agreement for the search giant to acquire some of Fossil Smartwatch technology and members of the research and development division responsible for creating it. The deal is worth roughly $40 million, and under the current terms Fossil will transfer a “portion” of its R&D team, the portion directly responsible for the intellectual property being sold, over to Google.

As a result, Google will now have a dedicated team with hardware experience working internally on its WearOS software platform and potentially on new smartwatch designs as well. It’s unclear what exactly that innovation is, or why exactly Google is so eager to buy it, although $40 million is a drop in the bucket for Google when it comes to acquisition costs.

Fossil has been Google’s most consistent and long-term hardware partner on WearOS, since back when it was named Android Wear and Google was looking for watchmakers to help it rival Apple in the wearable space. Fossil has specialized in what are known as hybrid smartwatches: devices that do some minor smart features like step-tracking and notifications, but otherwise look and feel like your standard, semi-expensive wristwatch.

The company makes smartwatches with touchscreens that resemble other WearOS devices and the Apple Watch, but its strong suit has always been the hybrid watch, given Fossil’s design and manufacturing experience in the traditional accessories market. The issue there, however, is that Fossil, while making some of the nicest-looking smartwatches, has been slow to adopt technologies like GPS and heart-rate tracking that have existed on other wearables for years. So in this case, Fossil may have cracked something having to do with hybrid watches, but we just don’t know yet.

Byju acquires US based Osmo

Online tutoring start-up Byju’s has acquired US based playful learning system Osmo for $120 Million. The acquisition, Byju’s first ever of a US company, will help the Indian start-up expand into a new younger demographic of kids between 3 and 8, and allow it to tap into Osmo’s physical-to-digital technology and content.

Byju’s has aggressive plans for the international market and will continue to make big investments in technology to further personalize learning for students. It has been growing at 100% over the past three years and is on target to triple revenue to Rs 1,400 crore this year.

Just last month, Byju’s raised $540 million at a valuation of $3.6 billion, as robust investor demand swelled the size of its latest funding round and turned the founder of the eponymous start-up into an overnight billionaire. That funding round put Byju’s fourth on the list of India’s most valuable start-ups, after digital payments firm Paytm (One97 Communications Ltd), cab-hailing service Ola and budget hotel chain Oyo Rooms.

The focus at Byju’s has been on creating engaging, immersive content offered through personalized learning experiences to students across grades. Osmo’s use of mixed reality interactions can help it expand its platform to new audiences and applications. Launched in 2015, the Byju’s Learning App currently offers personalized programs for school students across grades 4-12. It has over 2 million annual paid subscriptions and 30 million students cumulatively learning from the app.

Yatra acquires PL Worldways

In a move to fortify its presence in southern India, Nasdaq-listed Yatra online, Inc. has bought the corporate travel business of Chennai-based offline travel services provider PL Worldways Ltd.

This acquisition will help strengthen Yatra's foothold in the southern India region along with adding more than 100 corporate clients to its existing client base of over 700. The company’s local connect and customer service expertise will complement Yatra’s technology platform and leverage the largest hotel network in the country. This will help clients optimize their travel spend and improve their travel processes.

PL Worldways was formed in 1985 as is a fully owned subsidiary of Peirce Leslie & Co, UK, even though the group’s history dates back to the pre-Independence era of India. Currently, PL Worldways has 11 offices across India with over 200 employees.

In July 2016, Yatra had signed a reverse-merger agreement with US-based special purpose acquisition company Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corp, which was listed on the Nasdaq, paving the way for a back-door listing of the second Indian online travel services provider in the US after MakeMyTrip.

Cision acquires Falcon.io

Copenhagen based startup Falcon.io makes social media marketing easy, managing comprehensive social media marketing campaigns for brands through publishing, engagement, listening, advertising and measurement. The company has just been acquired by Chicago-based Cision, a public relations and media software company.

Founded in 2010, Falcon.io offers an integrated SaaS platform for digital marketing, which allows companies to create paid and organic posts for all of their social networks in one collaborative content calendar, and manage channels, teams, workflows and campaigns. With offices in New York, Copenhagen, Sofia, Berlin, Melbourne and Budapest, Falcon counts many major companies as clients including Carlsberg, Toyota, William Grant & Sons, Momondo, Panasonic, and Coca-Cola.

Cision’s software allows users to identify key influencers, craft and distribute strategic content, and measure the impact of their campaigns. The company has over 4,000 employees with offices in 15 countries throughout the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. The acquisition of Falcon.io will solidify Cision’s market leadership in media management, moving beyond the tactical nature of PR solutions. While Falcon.io will continue to function as a stand-alone social media platform for marketers, it will also be integrated with the Cision Communications Cloud® to expand social media capabilities to media and communications professionals.