Mindtree to buy Magnet 360

Mid-size IT services firm Mindtree Ltd has inked a definitive agreement to acquire Magnet 360, a Salesforce.com platinum consulting partner, for $50 Million in cash, in a move at addressing the cloud based services market. The deal amount includes an upfront payment of $37 Million and earns out and additional payout of up to $13 Million over the next two years.

With the acquisition of Magnet 360, Mindtree will add more than 100 certified Salesforce experts and help clients digitize back end values chains. This acquisition will strengthen their offerings in digitizing the value chain and building sense and respond systems. Founded in 2008, Magnet 360 specializes in Multi-clouded solutions providing consulting services and implementation, mainly to media/entertainment, manufacturing and finance industries. It is operational mainly in the US.

The company has been a Salesforce partner since 2004. Salesforce, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud and others are trademarks of Salesforce.com. Magnet 360 works with companies across Salesforce solutions such as CRM, branded sites and communities, social campaign strategy and management and marketing automation. Salesforce had invested in Magnet 360 along with StarTec Investments and Gage Group.

The company is headquartered in Minneapolis with Offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Its revenue was about $25 Million in calendar year 2015. Bangalore based Mindtree counts Nalanda Capital, Global Technology Ventures and V G Siddhartha led café Coffee Day Group as its shareholders.

Haier to buy GE appliance unit

China’s Haier Group agreed to buy General Electric (GE) appliance business for $5.4 Billion. This will be the country biggest acquisition of an overseas electronics company. Buying a century old business that makes $8500 refrigerators from the likes of GE would underscore the rise of a Chinese company once known for making cheap fridge for college dormitories.

It also highlights Haier global ambitions as the acquisition would help the company expand in the US, one the markets it is trying to focus on besides Europe and Japan. This acquisition surpasses state backed Tsinghua Holding plans for a $3.8 Billion investment in Western Digital Corp announced last year and Lenovo Group $2.8 Billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility Group in 2014.

Midea is China biggest manufacturer of appliances with a 17% share of the country market in 2015 followed by Qingdao Haier with 7.9% Euromonitor International Data show. Haier had a 11% share of the US appliance market last year. GE and Haier will also cooperate in industrial internet, healthcare and advanced manufacturing. Both companies will also work together to develop and grow affordable consumer health initiatives in China. 

Apple Buys Emotient

Apple has bought a San Diego startup working on Artificial Intelligence technology that analyzes facial expressions to detect emotions. Facial Recognition is an area in which several major tech companies have interest, though it’s not without controversy.

Facebook decided against releasing its Moments photo app in Europe because of fears over privacy regulations and Google Photos only offers its facial recognition feature in the US. Apple has also made some other acquisitions. Faceshift, a motion capture startup focused on facial analysis, and Perceptio a company with deep learning image recognition technology designed for mobile processors.

Improving Image recognition is a hot topic in Silicon Valley where Apple rivals Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc. Google and others are investing heavily in Artificial Intelligence techniques. Apple has expressed interest in the field. In a 2014 patent application, it described a software system that would analyze and identify people moods based on a variety of clues including facial expression.

In October, Apple confirmed that it had acquired another artificial Intelligence startup VocalIQ Ltd. that aims to improve a computer ability to understand natural speech. In May, Emotient announced it had been granted a patent for a method of collecting and labeling as many as 100,000 facial images a day so computers can better recognize different expressions.

Paytm acquires Shifu

Payments service provider Paytm, run by One97 Communications Pvt. Ltd, has acquired consumer behavior prediction and recommendation platform Shifu for $8 Million. Delhi based Shifu, run by Signal Inc. started operations in August 2012. It mines the smartphone usage patterns of users and makes personalized recommendations to them.

Shifu has been quite popular as an intelligent task managing application. This acquisition will give further impetus to focus on Artificial Intelligence. By predicting user behavior based on past usage, location and other data points, Paytm platform will be able to offer relevant recommendations to users. Paytm will be able to offer a highly intuitive and personalized experience to users.

Shifu is a free task managing app. Once the app is installed, it analyses the usage patterns of the device owner and makes a variety of suggestions based on a predictive algorithm. Paytm has been actively investing in startups. The company in October invested in transportation app Jugnoo, in Hyperlocal deals platform ‘Little’ in July, and in logistics startup LogiNext.

Noida based Paytm currently has a user base of more than 100 Million. The company is backed by investors including Alibaba Group, Saif Partners, Sapphire Venture and Silicon Valley Bank. Paytm which started out as payments solutions providers ventured into e-commerce in May 2014. In November, Paytm acquired home service marketplace Near.in for an undisclosed amount to focus on O2O and Hyperlocal commerce.