Dineout acquires inResto Service

Hotel Reservation Platform Dineout has acquired Bengaluru based inResto Service Pvt. Ltd. Dineout, part of Times Internet Ltd was founded in 2012. It has listings of over 20,000 restaurants and operates in seven Indian cities. Dineout has raised an undisclosed amount in funding so far in January 2014.

Food tech companies have been adding new services to consolidate its market share in the fast growing space. Deepinder Goyal founded Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd. launched services to reserves a table, book cabs and make payments on its app as well. InResto has so far seated over 1 Million restaurant diners in three cities in the six months since its launch.

The acquisition will ensure that restaurants get one dashboard to manage different functions like reservation, home delivery, takeaways, customer feedback and mobile payments and other restaurant management function. Post the acquisition the whole team at inResto will join Dineout in Bengaluru.

In coming months, Dineout is planning to launch a developer platform that will enable any service across the food tech ecosystem to integrate with them to reach a wider set of restaurants. 

Bharti Airtel Buys Augere

Bharti Airtel has agreed to acquire Augere Wireless Broadband India, as the nation’s top telecom carrier looks to consolidate its 4G footprint ahead of the launch of similar high speed broadband services by rivals such as Vodafone India, Idea Cellular and Reliance Jio Infocomm.

Upon acquisition Augere will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Airtel. Augere had won a block of 20 MHz of 4G spectrum in the Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh circle for Rs 122.46 crore in 2010 auctions. The company owned by France Telecom and a clutch of private equity funds such as Harbinger Capital and New Silk Route initially announced plans of rolling out 4G services in late 2011.

The latest move will allow Airtel to expand its 4G high speed broadband footprint ahead of the 4G launch by Reliance Jio and Vodafone, scheduled for December. Idea launch is slated for early next year. Airtel had bought airwaves in the 2300 MHz band in Kolkata, Maharashtra, Punjab and Karnataka in the 2010 spectrum auctions and later acquired chip-maker Qualcomm airwaves in another four circles of Delhi, Mumbai, Kerala and Haryana.

Both 4G and 3G spectrum are critical for the next phase of growth of mobile phone operators as mobile data increasingly replaces voices as the main growth driver for them. Airtel posted almost 80% growths in its mobile data revenue in the first fiscal quarter through June. In March, Airtel entered into a partnership with China Mobile, the world’s largest telecom operator. 

Nippon Life to buy Mitsui Life

Nippon Life Insurance Co., Japan’s biggest life insurer by assets plans to acquire Mitsui Life Insurance Co. Nippon Life plans to offer 300 Billion yen to 400 Billion yen for at least an 80% stake in Mitsui Life.

Buying Mitsui Life would contrast with a wave of multibillion dollar takeovers abroad by Japanese insurers as the country aging population limits growth prospects at home. Nippon Life plans to spend as much as 500 Billion yen on acquisitions including overseas insurers and asset managers.

Osaka based Nippon Life has been taking minority stakes in companies such as AIA Group Ltd, in Hong Kong, Post Advisory Group in the US, Indonesia Sequis Life and Reliance Group in India. Purchasing the company would help Nippon Life vie with Dai-ichi Life as Japan’s largest earner of insurance premium income. Nippon life got 5.37 Trillion yen from premiums in the year ended March, and Mitsui Life had 545 Billion yen.

Sumitomo Life Insurance Co. agreed this month to purchase Symetra Financial Corp for about $3.8 Billion. Tokio Marine Holdings Inc. agreed in June to acquire HCC Insurance Holdings Inc. for about $7.5 Billion and Dai-ichi Life struck a deal last year to buy protective Life Corp. for more than $5 Billion.

Fitbit enters Indian Market

Fitbit has formally entered the Indian Market by launching its complete range of fitness bands both online and offline and is aiming to become the No. 1 player in local market in the near future. The company expects India to be among its top 5 markets in next couple of years. The Indian market is currently led by Chinese company Xiaomi with its Mi Band.

Founded by James Park and Eric Friedman in 2007, San Francisco based Fitbit claims to lead the US Fitness tracker market with an 85 percent share as of March 2015, up from 67 percent a year earlier. Its revenue more than tripled from a year earlier in the quarter through March 2015. Fitbit product can be synchronized with more than 200 smartphones running on iOS, Android and Windows operating systems, as well as Apple Mac OS.

In India, the market of wearable is embryonic, selling a handful of products like smart watches and fitness brands launched by handset makers such as Samsung, Sony, Motorola, and Alcatel One touch. The fitness band segment has lately seen some action with players like Xiaomi, Micromax, Goqii making their products available at competitive price points. Fitbit too soft launched its bands in June, offering them on Amazon India.

The company will now offer its products through partnerships with Reliance Digital, Croma and Helios, which sell Fitbit seven products. There are several cheaper products available in Indian Market from rival companies. Sales of wearable devices such as smart watches and fitness bands in India totaled one lakh units in 2014 and are expected to grow to a million in 2015. Indian market reached three lakh units by the end of the second quarter of 2015. 

Ixigo acquires IndianBackPacker.com

Mobile travel search firm Ixigo has acquired all intellectual property of Desi Backpacking Travelers Pvt. Ltd, the company that runs IndianBackPacker.com for an undisclosed amount. This is the first acqui-hiring deal for Ixigo.

Acqui-hiring is the process by which one company acquires another to gain access to its employees. In such an acquisition, the acquiring company may or may not have any interest in the target company products and services. The company wants to build a strong connect with communities of travellers who possess a shared passion, purpose or taste.

Ixigo recently received an investment from smartphone manufacturer Micromax and is looking to grow five-fold to reach over 30 Million monthly active mobile users by the end of 2016. There is a clear opportunity to build a community platform that enhances engagement and provides authentic and unbiased curated content for Indian Travellers.

Aricent Acquires SmartPlay

Aricent Inc., a US based company providing Software and engineering services, has acquired Bangalore based Chip design services firm SmartPlay Technologies Pvt. Ltd. for around $180 Million. This is one of the biggest acquisitions in the semiconductor space in India. It is also Aricent fifth and the biggest ever acquisition in the country.

SmartPlay has around 1,200 employees in India, Germany, Singapore and the US. The acquisition will also expand Aricent 10,000 strong engineering team, which caters to nine core industries including telecommunications, networking, consumer electronics, industrial automation, semiconductor, automotive, internet services, consumer and enterprise software, media and entertainment.

The acquisition follows France based Technology consulting firm Altran acquisition of India based SiCon Design Technologies last month and the acquisition of Bengaluru based Cosmic Circuits in 2013 by Cadence Design Systems of the US, and demonstrates India’s growing and deep strengths in semiconductor design. SmartPlay was founded in 2008.

Aricent started in late 1990s as Hughes Software, a firm that was acquired by Flextronics International. In 2006, private equity major Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co. acquired a majority stake in the venture and renamed it Aricent. Aricent previously acquired four other Indian firms – FutureSoft, Emuzed, Deccanet and Tenet Technologies. 

Thomas Cook India Acquires Kuoni Group

Travel major Thomas Cook India backed by billionaire investor Prem Watsa Fairfax Financial Holdings has acquired Swiss Tourism major Kuoni Travel business in India and Hong Kong for Rs. 535 crore. Post the acquisition, both India and Hong Kong travel businesses will become subsidiaries of Thomas Cook and would function independently.

The Kuoni brand is licensed to Thomas Cook for one year in India and for five years in Hong Kong. All other brands of Kuoni such as SOTC, SITA and Distant Frontiers are transferred with the businesses. The acquisition is expected to help Thomas Cook to enhance its offerings on inbound, outbound, and corporate travel. Brands of Kuoni, especially SITA is strong in inbound offerings.

Kuoni was founded in 1906 and entered India in 1997 by acquiring SOTC Tours, which was one of pioneers of foreign tours in the country. Three years later, it took over SITA World Travels, a specialist inbound tours. SITA is said to be the largest inbound tour operators in India and with this acquisition, Thomas Cook can move up to the top rank in the inbound market.

In January this year, Kuoni had announced that it will exit its tour business in India and other parts of the world to focus on its core business as a service provider to the travel industry and governments, making it largely a B2B player. With the sale of its tour operations in India and Hong Kong, the company has completed the sale of its outbound business.

Housing to Buy Homebuy360.com

Softbank backed Housing.com, owned and operated by Locon Solutions Private Limited, is in advanced talks to acquire Homebuy360.com, a Koramangala based RETech startup that connects builders, brokers and buyers. Housing will pay close to Rs. 5 Crore for cloud based Real Estate startup.

This is Housing third acquisition. In May this year, it acquired Delhi based Realty Business Intelligence private limited, an information portal focused on the realty industry for Rs.10 Crore. In March, it acquired Real Estate focused online discussion platform, Indian Real Estate Forum for Rs. 8 Crore. Earlier this year, it was seeking to buy real estate data analytics platform PropEquity for an estimated deal value of around Rs. 80-85 Crore but later in May it called off the negotiations.

As of now, the company is present in seven cities, including Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Nagpur, and Delhi and has 35 real estate developers on board like Pride Purple, Vaswani group, The Address Makers, PBEL, and Puranik Developers. The portal operates on various revenue models for developers, including pay per user, pay over time, pay as you sell and pay per project model.

Airtel Acquires YTS Solutions

Bharti Airtel Ltd has acquired financial solutions firm YTS Solutions for an undisclosed amount and announced appointment of the latter co-founder Manish Khera as CEO of its mobile wallet service Airtel M Commerce Services. The acquired business will be integrated with the operations of Airtel Money Services Ltd.

Based out of Mumbai, YTS has been developing financial products focused on mass market and micro-transactions. This acquisition will expand Airtel portfolio in the mobile commerce segment and bring in a host of new product capabilities targeted at migrants in urban cities and their families in rural towns and villages.

The acquisition, the first such by an Indian Telco in the mobile commerce segment, will help in expanding the portfolio of Airtel Money, a mobile wallet, even as the Telco awaits the Reserve Bank of India decision on its application for a payments bank license. The acquisition is the first of its kind among Telecom service providers who offer mobile wallets.

In 2011, AMSL announced the launch of Airtel Money and in January 2015, it applied for a Payment Bank License. Airtel, India’s largest mobile operator with a customer base of over 230 Million, covers 430,000 towns and villages backed by 1.5 Million distribution outlets. Other Telecom providers such as, Vodafone has M-Pesa, Idea Cellular has Idea Money and Tata Teleservices has MRupee, and all of them compete with the likes of Paytm, MobiKwik, PayU and Oxigen for a share of the fast growing mobile commerce pie.

Yahoo to acquire Polyvore

Yahoo Chief executive officer Marissa Mayer is pushing to add more news, entertainment and shopping information to the web portal in order to draw a bigger audience and sell advertising. Yahoo Inc. is buying shopping service Polyvore Inc., seeking to improve its online fashion content and boost shopping related advertising.

Polyvore, which combines social and e-commerce, tools for apparel and accessories, will initially be integrated into Yahoo’s Magazines that focus on beauty and style. Polyvore lets users put together themed collections of items, like those seen in fashion magazines. People can browse through the collections and then buy the items. Polyvore will add more than 350 retailers to Yahoo’s advertising platform.

Polyvore backers include Goldman Sachs, DAG Ventures, and Benchmark Capital. The company had raised $22 Million. Earlier this year, Yahoo unveiled new financial metric tracking revenue in its four key areas of growth: mobile, video, native, and social, or MaVeNS. The idea was to focus investors’ attention on the areas of the company that are growing while diverting their focus from its shrinking desktop display and search ads.