Sports365 acquires Tennishub.in

Bangalore based Pulse Sport Pvt. Ltd, which runs Sports365, an online store of sports goods and fitness equipment has acquired online Tennis store Tennishub.in in an all-stock deal. The aim is to specialize in different verticals and cater to the specific set of audience in a more customized manner.

Tennishub.in is an online tennis store founded by tennis player and Olympian Vishnu Vardhan and sports entrepreneur Afroze Khan. The team of Tennishub will join Sports365. It consists of 18 employees. Sports365 has also launched a new portal catering to running enthusiasts called Runninghub.in and plans to launch different segments for cycling and outdoor products in the next three months.

Runninghub.in will offer a selection of running shoes, apparel, running gear and nutrition related products. It will also allow runners to interact with experts and get advice in real time. Sports365 raised $1.5 Million last year from US based venture capital firm Zolon Ventures and Powerhouse Ventures. It will close another $6 Million in funding in six weeks. The investors are likely going to be a venture capital funds and companies who are related to sports business.

It will spend over $4-5 Million of this money into marketing and product development including expansion of its range of private label products. It currently sells apparel and accessories. It will expand it to three more categories including fitness. For Marketing, it plans to continue with aggressive Social Media and re-targeting campaigns. It claims to be selling 25,000 products per month with an average ticket size of INR 1600-1700.

Besides Mahesh Bhupathi and his wife Lara Dutta, the company has cricketer Yuvraj Singh as its stakeholders. While there aren’t many firms in the sports category in India, the company locks horns with general merchandiser such as Snapdeal and Flipkart, who sells sports and fitness categories on their platform.

Portea Medical buys MedybizPharma

Healthtech Startup Portea Medical, which provides health care at home for patients acquired Bengaluru, based specialized pharmaceutical distributor MedybizPharma in a cash and stock deal for an undisclosed amount.

The company is engaged in distribution, prescription refill, and therapy compliance support for specialty medicines and provides patient assistance by improving access and increasing therapy compliance. The company services corporates, insurance companies, hospitals, institutions and nursing homes and cover diabetes, cardiology, oncology, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, tuberculosis and neurology.

MedybizPharma was started in 2009 and has served more than 200,000 patients. It has 200 employees and is present across 26 cities in India. The company was acquired from the Reliance ADA Group by its Management Team in 2011. Portea Medical handles more than 60,000 home visits a month across 24 cities in India. It had received $37.5 Million in Series B funding from Accel, IFC, Qualcomm ventures and Ventureast in September.

Portea focuses on general primary health care, post-hospitalization care, chronic disease management and allied services such as diagnostics and medical equipment on hire thereby bringing the entire gamut of healthcare services to a patient doorstep. The company works with Hospitals, insurance companies and individuals to improve health outcomes by providing continuity of care in home setting through doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and nursing attendants employed by Portea. It has partnered with more than 50 hospitals and has a network of referring physicians all over India.

NumberMall acquires BankSmarts Solutions

NumberMall, a Hyderabad based merchant engaged payment gateway services platform has acquired all the businesses of Delhi Headquartered analytics startup BankSmarts Solutions for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition will extend NumberMall analytics capabilities, customer reach and merchant offers. The combination is expected to enable new classes of products and services that meet customer needs in assisted ecommerce. Incepted in 2012, NumberMall annual turnover is around Rs 120 Crore, with Business growing 10 percent per month-on-month, though the company has set its sights on 25 percent month-on-month growth.

Besides, it has so far serviced more than 30 Million customers on its platform through 16,000 touch points. During January this year, it raised Rs 5 Crore in equity funding from SRI Capital. Founded in 2013, BankSmarts Solution helps marketers reach the right customers for their products and services by creating customer maps, including customer preferences, purchase propensity, and responsiveness to promotions and offers based on their profile and past purchases.

The solutions help design promotions optimally, and then track effectiveness of promotions in real time, taking corrective action if necessary. The technology platforms work on streaming big data and leverage predictive analysis and machine learning. Kae Capital and SRI Capital are seed investors in the company.

Pfizer to buy Allergan

The biggest deal of pharmaceutical is here and Pfizer Inc. will become Pfizer Plc. The maker of Viagra and Lipitor has struck a deal to buy Botox Maker Allergan Plc. in a transaction valued at about $160 Million. The complex deal, the biggest ever in the healthcare sector, will allow Pfizer to shift its legal base to Ireland in a so called “inversion” that would reduce its tax rate.

New York based Pfizer and Allergan, headquartered in Ireland said Allergan shareholders will receive 113 shares in the combined company for each share held. The deal values Allergan shares at $363.63 each. Pfizer stockholders will have the option of receiving one share of the combined company for each of their Pfizer shares or receive cash. Aggregate amount of cash to be paid is not less than $6 Billion or more than $12 Billion.

Apart from male libido drug Viagra and cholesterol drug Lipitor, Pfizer major drugs include nerve pain treatment Lyrica and Prevnar, a treatment for Pneumonia. Allergan best known for its anti-wrinkle treatment Botox also makes Alzheimer drug Namenda and dry eye medication Restasis. The business of Pfizer and Allergan will be combined under Allergan Plc., which will be renamed Pfizer Plc.

Take Solutions acquires Ecron Acunova

Take Solutions Ltd, Chennai based Technology Company with interest in life sciences has entered into definitive agreements to acquire Life Sciences services player, Ecron Acunova. The company acquired Ecron Acunova in Rs. 115 crore.

Ecron Acunova is a life sciences services company delivering pharmaceutical research services to global clients across South East Asia, Central & Nordic Europe and North America. There is a growing focus on quality, data, analytics, and outcomes in the industry, resulting in increased pharma/biotech R&D spending and funding.

TAKE and EA combined attributes will strengthen TAKE position as a fully integrated differentiated life sciences services provider to large and small global pharmaceutical companies and thereby broaden the addressable market. TAKE will add expertise in the areas of Biosimilars, Regenerative Medicine and Diagnostic imaging agent’s space which are emerging growth areas.

It would help TAKE move the addressable market for its services to $30 Billion and will enhance company presence in Europe and North countries. With this acquisition, TAKE will add audit ready infrastructure in Europe and India, and parts of South Asia to its expanding footprint. 

Apollo Tyres acquires Germany Reifencom

After having failed to acquire the US based Cooper Tire in a $2.5 Billion deal, the country second largest tyre manufacturer by Sales, Apollo Tyres had acquired Reifencom GmBH, one of the largest tyre distributors in Germany for Euro 45.6 Million.

Reifencom GmBH has an online presence in six countries – Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Denmark. In Addition, it operates 37 stores and service centres across Germany. Acquisition will enable Apollo to improve its mix of distribution channels in Germany and Europe and aid in increasing the visibility of Apollo and Vredestein tyres offline and especially in the fast growing online retail space.

Reifencom has turnover of 147 Million euro in 2014. The acquisition will give Apollo two benefits: increase in number of channels overseas as well as access to retailing multiple brands. Apollo already has 3,500 dealers/partners in Europe which will now get further enhanced due to the acquisition of Reifencom.

The success of Reifencom GmBH is attributed to its highly efficient logistics system, which ensures there is a guarantee of a high degree of availability of all kinds of tyres and rims, even during busy periods like spring and autumn. Reifencom GmBH procures tyres and rims from leading manufacturers thereby ensuring a high level of quality.

Marriott to buy Starwood

Marriott International Inc. will buy Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. for $12.2 Billion to create the world’s largest hotel chain with top brands including Sheraton, Ritz Carlton and the Autograph Collection.

The combined company will own or franchise more than 5,500 hotels with 11 Million rooms worldwide and give Marriott greater presence in markets such as Europe, Latin America, & Asia including India and China. Marriott currently has three-quarters of its rooms in the United States. Starwood, which also owns St. Regis and Aloft Hotel brands, gets nearly two thirds of its revenue from outside the country.

Starwood had essentially put itself up for sale in April, when it said it was considering strategic alternatives, taking about 14% off its stock up to Friday’s close. The company which had a market value of $12.67 Billion had reached out of InterContinental Hotels Group Plc. Wyndham Worldwide Corp and sovereign wealth funds for a possible deal.

Starwood shareholders will get 0.92 Marriott Class A share and $2 in cash for each share held. They will also get about $7.80 per share from the spinoff of Starwood timeshare business and subsequent merger with Interval Leisure Group Inc.  

R-Com to acquire Sistema

Reliance Communications Ltd. is acquiring Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd Wireless business for equity worth Rs. 2,100 crore. It has also committed to paying Sistema liabilities to the government, the present value of which is Rs. 2,400 crore. R-com has paid three times Sistema annual revenues of Rs. 1500 crore.

This is much higher than Bharti Airtel Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd enterprise value of sales valuation of around 2.2 times. While these companies have operating profit margins of over 30%, Sistema reported operating losses were over 30% of its revenues. Sistema holds 800 Mega Hertz spectrums in eight key circles, which can be extremely valuable for Reliance Jio.

Sistema will be launching its LTE Services, including voice over LTE, with much wider coverage, vis-à-vis spectrum in higher frequency bands. Sistema holds spectrum in lucrative circles such as Delhi, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kolkata. Sistema spectrum in these eight circles is worth Rs. 7,955 crore. Not all of this will necessarily flow into R-com books, even if Reliance Jio agrees the price.

This is because the government spectrum trading guidelines includes a clause that states that for any spectrum acquired in the March 2013 auction trading will be permitted only if the price differential the latest price auction price is paid.

CarTrade buys CarWale

The auto market in India is both huge and disorganized. A number of well-funded online portals have come up in recent times to connect sellers with buyers more efficiently in this chaotic market. But now consolidation is under way as competition gets intense.

Online automobile classifieds firm CarTrade has acquired rival CarWale from German Media conglomerate Axel Springer signaling the rising consolidation in the industry segment. This comes soon after another major player in this space; CarDekho announced the acquisition of Times Internet Zigwheels. Earlier it had acquired another portal called Gaadi from the Ibibo group.

CarTrade buyout of CarWale comes a year after it raised $30 Million in a funding round led by Warburg Pincus and Chip Perry. In November 2013, CarDekho parent company Girnar raised $15 Million in a Series A round of funding from Sequoia Capital. In January 2015, it raised its big Series B round of $50 Million from Chinese investment management firm Hillhouse Capital and Hong Kong based hedge fund Tybourne Capital.

Indian Tycoon Ratan Tata had also pumped in an undisclosed amount into the company. In May, another undisclosed round of funding came from private sector lender HDFC Bank. With all the money in the bank, CarDekho has some serious muscle to flex in its tussle         with CarTrade.

Quikr Buys Indian Realty Exchange

Online classifieds portal Quikr India Pvt. Ltd had acquired Indian Realty Exchange (IRX, incorporated as 123 Startup Ventures Pvt. Ltd) a real estate agent aggregator, for an undisclosed amount to strengthen its real estate vertical QuikrHomes.

With its latest round of funding ($60 Million) in September, Quikr strengthened its push in five business segments automobiles, real estate, jobs, services and customer-to-customer sales to explore new sources of revenue. These five categories account for about 90% of the 10 Million listings of platform. This acquisition will allow it to gain access to real estate agents.

QuikrHomes currently has customers in 1000 cities and towns across India and concludes 200,000 transactions per month. IRX helps users connect to the agents for buying and selling property, and updates listings with locations in real time and features agent reviews, rankings, trust networks and a chat platform for agents to exchange inventory and requirements with users and other agents.

Quikr has received funding of around $200 Million since its inception in 2008, and counts Tiger Global Management, Kinnevik, Matrix Partners India, Nokia Growth Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Omidyar Network, Warburg Pincus, and eBay as its investors. QuikrHomes enters into competition with CommonFloor, Housing.com, PropTiger, NoBroker, and Magic Bricks. 

Gomalon acquires Bookmyspa

Two year old spa and salon booking portal, Bookmyspa has been acquired by Gomalon, a startup that lists wellness services in Bengaluru, in an equity deal of about Rs 12 Crore. The buyout has made Gomalon the largest appointment booking platform in Bengaluru with over 2,000 vendors. The two entities will be merged after the deal is closed.

Gomalon was founded in February as a discovery and booking platform for wellness centres. It is currently operational in Bangalore where it lists over 270 services across 12 categories. Gomalon will expand to metros in next 12 months.  The two year old Bookmyspa.in has operations in Bangalore and Hyderabad. The startup also had plans to launch in Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai.

The combined entity would compete with the likes of BeautyBooked, Ziffi, Vyomo, Purplle, ManageMySpa and other online ventures. India’s beauty and wellness industry has seen a lot of investor action. India B&W sector is to be worth Rs 1 Lakh Crore this year. Several online players that facilitate listings, discovery and booking of wellness services have raised external capital.

Bengaluru based Vyomo Pvt. Ltd, which runs a beauty and wellness platform had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by TaxiForSure in June. In January, Mumbai based Lifestyle Pvt. Ltd; the company behind Purplle.com secured an undisclosed amount in Series A funding from early to growth stage VC firm IvyCap Ventures.

Piramal Enterprises acquires Baby Care Brand Little

Piramal Enterprises has entered the baby care segment by acquiring a 100% stake in Little India, the country oldest baby care products brand, for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition will add eight categories to Piramal Enterprises consumer product division which sells Lacto Calamine Lotion and Headache drug Saridon.

Little baby care range includes feeding, grooming, bath, bedtime, clothing, travel, and playtime accessories. After Johnson and Johnson there are not many serious players in baby care market in India as the sector is too fragmented. However, people will be ready to pay a premium as long as the products from emerging companies are significantly differentiated.

Piramal Enterprises entered the over-the-counter (OTC) market with the acquisition of Saridon from Roche Holding AG and Lacto Calamine from Duphar Interfran Ltd in the early 1990s. They were followed by joint ventures with Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc. and Boosts Plc. to get their OTC range to India in 1990s itself. It was only in 2007 that Piramal decided to establish its own consumer products division.

The Little Brand is available at chemists, cosmetics and kids stores, modern trade and e-commerce formats. Piramal entry into Pharmaceuticals came around 1988 when he acquired Nicholas Laboratories Ltd for Rs. 1.6 Crore at a time when most multinational drug makers were exiting India.

Expedia Acquires HomeAway

Expedia Inc. has agreed to acquire the publicly traded vacation rental service HomeAway and its brands for $3.9 Million in cash and Expedia common stock. This move could ramp up competition with apartment sharing startup AirBnB. Expedia is the world’s largest online travel services company by bookings.

The Austin, Texas based HomeAway was founded back in 2005. The company raised a total of almost $505 Million in five funding rounds before it went public in 2011. HomeAway currently features more than a Million paid vacation rental home listings in 190 countries on its site. The company also owns a portfolio of other rental sites, including VRBO.com and VacationRental.com in the US as well as similar sites in Germany, UK, France, Spain, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.

It also operates BedandBreakfast.com. This acquisition puts Expedia, which owns sites like Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, and Venera in direct competition with AirBnB. Given AirBnB rapid growth, Expedia probably looked at building its own competing service but decided to use its war chest to acquire HomeAway. Expedia biggest competitor, Priceline Group, doesn’t currently own a dedicated sharing economy travel site, but it’s Booking.com brand is slowly moving into this space.

Exotel acquires Voyce

Exotel, a Bangalore based virtual business telephone company, has acquired Voyce, a company which allows businesses to get real time customer feedback, to strengthen Exotel customer service offerings. Voyce claimed to work with over 20 enterprise hospitality chains in India and was founded in 2014.

Exotel claims over 1,400 clients and 70 employees. In February, Exotel acquired the voice based media startup Croak.it for an undisclosed amount. Exotel said that this acquisition would help it improve its services, adding that it planned to acquire more startups in the voice space. The company also claimed to have set up about 650 call centres since inception. In 2012, Exotel had raised Rs 2.5 crore in its Series A funding from Blume Ventures and Mumbai Angels in return for a 25% stake.

Exotel provides cloud telephony services for small and medium enterprises including virtual phone numbers, IVR Greetings and call routing, call centre set up and cash on delivery verification among others. The company deploys cloud based telephony solutions to replace communication hardware systems, to reduce costs, space requirements and maintenance efforts.

It also offers a virtual dashboard that offers various tools to help businesses manage several areas like sales, marketing, customer support, business intelligence and analytics. Its client includes taxi aggregator Ola, Lifestyle retailer Zivame and bus ticketing firm RedBus.

Activision Blizzard buys Candy Crush Saga Maker

Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard has bought King Digital Entertainment, the creator of mobile smash hit Candy Crush Saga, in a deal worth $5.9 Billion. King Digital Entertainment had built one of the largest networks of players on Facebook and on mobile devices noting that King’s games had 474 Million active users in the third quarter of 2015.

Activision already owns one of the biggest gaming franchises in Call of Duty, in addition to Destiny and huge properties such as World of WarCraft and StarCraft as a result of its merger with Blizzard in 2008. The company’s gaming portfolio grows even bigger with the addition of the biggest name in social gaming. Consumer spending on Candy Crush fell 13 percent year over year in the second quarter of this year.

Activision Blizzard games are played on consoles such as Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation. King floated on the New York Stock Exchange in March last year with a valuation of almost $8 Billion making it the most valuable British business of the tech craze. Candy Crush became wildly popular racking up a billion plays a day on smartphones for the company, based in London West End.

This acquisition clearly demonstrates a new commitment to mobile for Activision as well as the will to diversify their IP Portfolio to a more global female audience. Activision has taken in the past a more reserved approach to mobile, releasing only a handful of titles, like Hearthstone and mainly using mobile apps as side experiences to their PC and console games. In the meantime, global competitors such as EA or Tencent have embraced this new sector.

Quess Corp acquired Randstad India

Quess Corp, an integrated business service provider owned by Thomas Cook India has signed a deal to buy Sri Lankan arm of human resource provider Randstad India for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition of Randstad India Pvt. Ltd will strengthen Quess position as a leading provider of integrated HR solutions across staffing, permanent recruitment, executive search and recruitment process outsourcing.

The acquisition will strengthen Quess position as a leading Pan Asian player serving clients across South Asia, Middle East and South-East Asia. The acquisition is subject to statutory and regulatory approvals. Headquartered in Colombo, Randstad Lanka is one of the top five HR Services providers in Sri Lanka with a workforce of over 400 employees and having several Fortune 500 clients.

Bengaluru based Quess Corp has presence across five segments namely, global technology solutions, industrial asset management, integrated facilities management, people, services and logistics, and growth businesses group. It has pursued an aggressive acquisitions strategy, buying around 10 companies across different geographies and businesses for an estimated Rs 200 crore in the last five years.

In June this year, it acquired a 49 percent stake in Transfield Services WLL, which operates in the oil & gas market in Qatar and the Indian facility management business of American multinational Aramark, which operates in hospitality and healthcare facility management. Other companies that it acquired includes Canada based staffing firm Brainhunter Companies.