Livspace acquires Dwll.in

Helion Backed home design and décor start up Livspace has announced the acquisition of Bengaluru based Dwll.in to lead the space. Founded in 2013, Dwll.in is an Indian curated online network of interior designers. This is Livspace second acquisition in less than a month. Towards the end of the March, the company had bought DezignUp, an online design community and marketplace.

As part of the deal, the co-founders of Dwll.in and the core team will join the Livspace family. With this acquisition, Livspace will start building go-to-market strategy for the western region, in addition to expanding across other metros and Tier 1 Cities. Livspace is currently projecting a revenue run rate of more than a $10 Million in months to come.

Livspace is an online shopping destination for home décor and furnishings. Also, it offers facility to hire designers on its platform. Further, the users can customize the products based on their requirements. It delivers in Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Online home décor market in India will touch $20 Billion by 2015.

Out of this $20 Billion market 40% - 50% is furniture and rest are pure home décor items such as Cutlery, kitchen items, fancy lamps etc. Other players in the online furniture space include Urban Ladder, Fab Furnish, HomeLane, CustomerFurnish, Pepperfry etc. Online market place like Snapdeal, Jabong, Homeshop18 etc. also have home décor and furnishing as one of their verticals. 

PVR to acquire DLF DT Cinemas

Realty major DLF plans to sell ‘DT cinemas’ and is in talks with potential buyers including PVR Ltd, as part of its strategy to exit non-core businesses and cut huge debt of over Rs. 20,000 crore. This would be PVRs second attempt to acquire DT Cinemas after 2009, when it entered into definitive agreement with the DLF group.

India currently has 1,700 multiplex screens with PVR leading the market with 454 screens while the second ranked Inox owns 361 screens. DT Cinemas currently operates 29 screens in National capital Region of Delhi and Chandigarh. It will ramp up its operations to 39 screens by 2016. It is one of the significant players in the Delhi and the NCR with 18 screens in Delhi, eight in Gurgaon and another three in Chandigarh.

In December, Carnival acquired Anil Ambani Big Cinemas for an enterprise valuation of a little over Rs 710 crore. Inox Leisure, acquired Delhi based Satyam Cineplexes for nearly Rs 240 crore. Inox expanded its presence to 50 cities, with 91 Multiplexes and 358 screens. Housing development and Infrastructure sold its Multiplex business Broadway Cinemas to Carnival Cinemas, and Mexican Multiplex chain Cinepolis bought Fun Cinemas.

Though DLF Assets are located at prime places and command premium, the deal value is on the higher side in comparison to other deal that included in the recent past, indicating that the space getting more competitive. 

Apple Acquires Coherent Navigation

For many of the largest Silicon Valley Technology companies, location software undergirds numerous applications and features in their products. For Apple, it has been a game of catch up. Recently, Apple confirmed that it had purchased Coherent Navigation, a Bay Area global positioning company, further bolstering Apple location technology and services.

Apple buys smaller technologies companies time to time and generally do not discuss plans. Founded in 2008, Coherent Navigation was a small firm that focused on creating navigation services based on partnerships with companies like Boeing and Iridium, the satellite network operator. It worked on high precision navigation systems, technology that is far stronger than many consumer grade global positioning systems, which are typically accurate to within three to five meters.

It has also worked on autonomous navigation and robotics projects, as well as projects for the defense department. The purchase of Placebase, a small mapping service, in 2009 represented Apple transition to building its own mapping technology. Over the following years, Apple bought a string of companies in much the same vein, including Locationary and Hopstop.

Many of these acquisitions were part of a broader strategy to move away from reliance on Google Maps, Google widely used navigation service. In 2012, Apple released its own mapping service using in house technology as well as some licensed from TomTom, a Dutch digital mapping company.  This replaced Apple old mapping application, which was based on Google Maps.

Askme acquires BestAtLowest.com

Askme.com, the online search, listings and deals portal of Getit Infomedia Pvt. Ltd, has acquired Online groceries start up BestAtLowest.com. With this acquisition, the e-commerce portal and its team of 25 people became a part of Askme. This will work on integrating BestAtLowest.com into askmegroceries.com which will be launched later this year.

Accelity BestAtLowest.com Online services Pvt. Ltd, which runs bestatlowest.com is a marketplace working in the hub and spoke model. It has tied up with retailers and supermarket stores to acquire food and groceries to supply to its hub, which are the delivered across locations. It offers a same day delivery service within 4-6 hours of consumers placing an order in Delhi and the National Capital Region.

This is an acqui-hire, where one acquire a company and get its talent on board to extend or build a new category. In March, Godrej Nature Basket had acquired Ekstop.com, an online groceries portal, and integrated its platform to augment its online delivery and web presence. The brand also offers same day delivery in the five cities it operates.

Online groceries which is not even a per cent of sales of the consumer packaged goods sector, is becoming a fast growing segment. The internet will influence one-third of the total sales in the consumer packaged goods sector in the next five years. Brick and mortar retail in India is expected to grow three times to $180 Billion in 2020 from $60 Billion in 2015. 

Verizon to buy AOL

Verizon Communications is an American broadband and telecommunications company. It was founded as Bell Atlantic and it is the largest US Wireless communication service provider. AOL is an American multinational mass media corporation which develops, grows and invests in brands and websites. The company business spans digital distribution of content, products, and services, which it offers to consumers, publishers, and advertisers.

Recently, Verizon Communication said, it would buy AOL Inc. in a deal valued at about $4.4 Billion to gain access to AOL digital advertising service and content. The deal will see king of mobile phones acquire the one time king of media. Verizon is the largest phone operator in the country, and has growing lines of business offering high speed Internet, as well as business and streaming video services.

But in acquiring AOL, Verizon is buying much more than websites that host streaming content. Along with its video and online advertising technology, AOL owns the Huffington Post, a sprawling collection of international new websites with growing traffic. It also manages a dwindling but profitable dial up Internet business, providing online access for those who live in areas too remote to have broadband or who never canceled their subscriptions.

Verizon with more than 1.5 Billion connected devices has a vast network through which to distribute mobile content. It has been quietly building up its entertainment offerings, but until now has not made any significant acquisitions to bolster its offerings. 

Myntra Buys app developer Native5

Online fashion e-tailer Myntra has acquired Bengaluru based mobile application development platform Native5, a move that goes with its strategy to shift entirely to the mobile platform. Native5 has developed a cloud platform to create and distribute mobile apps across smart phones, tablets and desktops.

Flipkart and Myntra had recently closed down their websites, with the aim of focusing more resources on their mobile apps. There is also speculation that they may close down their desktop websites in the future and go mobile app only, considering they are getting a lot of traction on their apps.

Myntra recently hosted an open Mobile Hack Day’ and had about 160 Internal and External participants from various companies developing hacks around their mobile app. The winning hacks included chat based commerce, real time chat application to buy with friends, an augmented reality shooting game and an app that links all other apps. This shows that Myntra is serious about its ‘app only’ strategy and is looking at all possible angles to provide a better and more complete end to end experience.

Native5 was incubated at Microsoft Accelerator in 2013 and it was a part of the Nasscom 10,000 startup programme the same year. The venture was one of the finalists of Qualcomm QPrize in 2012. Previously, in 2012, Myntra acquired Exclusively, which had a private label brand, and in 2013, it acquired Fitiquette that developed an in-store dressing room experience akin to a virtual fitting room for shoppers to try on clothes online.

Carzonrent Buys Ridingo

Private Equity firm WestBridge Capital backed Carzonrent India Pvt. Ltd, which runs radio cab services besides offering self-drive car rental and fleet management services, has acquired Bangalore based 42 Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which runs a ride sharing app Ridingo for an undisclosed amount.

With the acquisition, Carzonrent expects ride share business to account for 75 per cent of its business in five years. It will continue to see the Ridingo brand name. New Delhi based Carzonrent, which started as a corporate leasing and Cab rental service provider in 2000 also owns Easy Cabs service and MYLES, a self-drive venture. Its car lease division has a fleet of about 2,000 cars and about 135 corporate clients. It is now focusing on the consumer side of business.

The company is backed by WestBridge Capital, BTS Advisors and SIDBI Venture, had together invested about Rs 80 crore for about 32 percent stake in 2012. Ridingo connects car owners to people looking for a ride within the city. At present, it claims over 8,500 registered users in Bangalore and enables over 400 trips per day.

In October last year, Japan Sumitomo Mitsui Auto service Co Ltd and Sumitomo Corporation through their joint venture firm SMAS auto Leasing India Pvt. Ltd, agreed to acquire the auto leasing business of Carzonrent for an undisclosed amount. At a global level, BlaBlaCar competes with Uber, which operates a carpooling service called UberPool in some markets. It is not available in India yet.

Future Retail to merge with Bharti Retail

Kishore Biyani Future Retail Ltd and Bharti Retail Ltd have decided to combine their retail operations to create Rs 15000 crore companies in a move that accelerates the consolidation of India’s organized retail trade. Bharti Retail will get a 10% stake in the combined entity. Future Retail is valued at Rs 5000 crore currently.

The combined company will be demerged into two companies one which will be the front end will retain the name Future Retail and will have 570 stores and a presence in multiple retail formats across 243 cities. The second will be back end, investments and Infrastructure Company and will be listed separately as Future Enterprises Ltd.

Bharti Retail has 203 Easy Day stores currently which generates close to Rs 2000 crore in revenues whereas Future Retail has 300 stores and revenues to close to Rs 13000 crore. Bharti Easy Day retail brand will be retained. Future retail has about Rs 1200 crore debt and Future infrastructure has close to Rs 3500 crore of debt in the books.

The company is looking to have 4000 supermarket or small format stores in India by 2021. Currently it has close to 450 small stores. Shareholders of both Bharti Retail and Future Retail would hold shares in the two new companies. Future retail operates around 350 stores in different parts of the country spread over 11 million feet of retail space. Bharti retail currently operates a network of over stores in multiple formats across 114 cities.

Filipino BPO, Blackstone to acquire Serco India

Private equity giant Blackstone and Filipino BPO Company SPi Global remain in race for buying London listed Serco’s Indian BPO Unit.  The deal is said to be in the range of $400 Million. Formerly known as Intelenet, it had been sold by Blackstone to Serco for $634 Million in 2011. Out of both companies, only one company will win the bid to acquire Serco BPO Unit.

Intelenet was set up in 2000 as a 50-50 venture between HDFC and TCS. In 2004, HDFC acquired TCS stake for 160 crore to sell it to Barclays later. In 2007, Blackstone bought an 80 percent stake in Intelenet for about $260 Million. When it sold Intelenet in 2011, Blackstone had a 66 percent stake and rest was divided among Barclays, HDFC and the management team. Blackstone had managed to get more than a 60 percent return on its four year investment.

Serco had announced the future strategy of the company would be to focus on being a Business to government service provider across five core areas and four key regions. SPi Global, a leading diversified BPO service provider in Philippines operates on offshore based model primarily serving US and Europe Customers with more than 20,000 employees across 17 delivery locations in six countries, including India, US, China, Vietnam, and Nicaragua.

In April 2012, Serco Group had bought all its BPO assets together to create Serco Global Services. Serco BPO operation is largest in India after Genpact and TCS.