Tech Mahindra to acquire Target Group

IT services and solutions firm Tech Mahindra has agreed to enter into an agreement to acquire Target Group, one of the leading processing platform companies in the UK. The value of acquisition is $164 Million and an adjustment for surplus cash up to GBP 8 Million.

The acquisition catapults Tech Mahindra to one of the top three processors in UK financial services for certain complex lending and investment product categories. It also strengthens Tech Mahindra European presence and adds several new clients. The acquisition will make Tech Mahindra a formidable player in the UK BFSI market with over 50 major financial institutions as clients.

The acquisition is in line with Tech Mahindra strategy of expanding its Fintech capabilities and adding IP and platforms to drive non linearity and play aggressively in the BFSI sector. Headquartered in the UK, Target Group has 740 employees and a client franchise, including leading financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley. Target Group also has a strong pipeline which provides for high earnings visibility and cash flow generation.

Target Group provides BPaaS offerings in the areas of lending and investment products servicing to its clients, on variable pricing models. The combination of proprietary software, strong regulatory compliance practice and domain knowledge is a key differentiator for Target Group. The acquisition will help Tech Mahindra to expand its offerings in the lending, savings and investment and insurance sectors.

Facebook acquires Two Big Ears

Facebook is continuing to devote resources to fine tuning how 3D audio impacts viewer perceptions in virtual reality. The social media giant and Oculus parent company announced they have purchased immersive audio company Two Big Ears and will be making their technology free as a part of their new Facebook 360 Spatial Workshop.

The Edinburg based company, which has been around since 2013, specializes in spatial 3D audio in cinematic and gaming experiences. The company technology focuses largely on how sound plays in 3D spaces and how it interacts with surfaces that surround the viewer. Further progress in building hyper-realistic 3D audio is a major get for Facebook video and the Oculus platform.

Both the Gear VR and Rift support the immersive audio technology and the fact that Facebook is opening up Two Big Ears 3Dception technology for free to developers is a nice move to keep content creators happy. The company previously had two immersive audio products based on solutions for both cinematic VR and gaming. While the cinematic VR product has morphed into the free “Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation”, Two Big Ears will be working with the Oculus team on a way to integrate the gaming software.

Immersive 3D audio is hugely important to high-end virtual reality like that available on the Rift, but it is really even more crucial to the rather rudimentary VR experiences like those that are available on Facebook video right now. With the Two Big Ears purchase, Facebook has made it easier for Developers to make their experiences better and has strengthened the company pull in making the social media site the default hub for immersive VR video content.

Convergys in talks to buy Minacs

Convergys Corp, the US based call centre operator with operations in India, is in advanced talks to buy business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Minacs Ltd in a deal worth $500 Million. Convergys and a clutch of PE investors, including CVC Capital Partners Ltd and HIG Capital Partners had expressed interest in buying Minacs.

Minacs was acquired by the current owners from Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd for $260 Million in 2014. In 2006, TransWorks Information Services Pvt. Ltd a unit of Aditya Birla Nuvo had acquired Canada firm Minacs Worldwide Inc. for about $125 Million. The $3 Billion Convergys provides customer management services in 58 Languages from more than 150 locations across the world. It employs 130,000 people across 31 countries.

Convergys claims to be number one in the US customer management industry with more than half of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies as clients. In India, Convergys is the 10^th largest with operations in Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Hyderabad, Gurgaon and Bengaluru. Minacs could be a right acquisition target for Convergys as it will help to strengthen its position in India, a fast growing outsourcing market.

Quikr buys beauty service provider Salosa

Online classified portal Quikr India Pvt. Ltd has acquired on-demand beauty service provider Salosa, owned by Beawel Tech Pvt. Ltd for an undisclosed amount in a move that will help the Tiger Global Management backed company penetrate deeper into the home services segment.

Salosa, founded in September 2015, currently operates in Gurgaon and parts of Delhi with a team of in-house beauticians. The beauty services market is close to $5 Billion in India and growing, which is evident from the increasing number of requests from Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. On demand beauty service is an important sub-category and Salosa will help bring very real benefits to consumers.

Quikr had earlier committed an investment of INR 250 crore to strengthen its home services vertical. QuikrServices has 250,000 service providers who offer more than 80 services for consumers and has about 100,000 daily customers. Quikr is growing beyond a listing platform to a one-stop shop for used goods by enabling payments on its platform, as well as facilitating logistics.

Quikr is focusing on five key business segments such as automobiles, real estate, jobs, services and customer to customer sales. It has identified a new source of revenue and fends off competition from other revenue capital backed businesses that have emerged in each of these categories. As a classified portal, Quikr has just one rival OLX, which is backed by Naspers Ltd, a South African mass media company.

Knowlarity Communications acquires Smartwards

Cloud telephony start-up Knowlarity Communications Pvt. Ltd has acquired Smartwards Services Pvt. Ltd, a Gurgaon based startup that helps small businesses with loyalty programs.

This is the second acquisition of Knowlarity, which employs about 450 people and has so far raised about $22.5 Million from investors Sequoia Capital and Mayfield Fund since it started in 2009. It earlier bought Unicom Techlabs Pvt. Ltd, another startup in the same space in January 2014, and claims to serve about 15,000 customers in 65 countries.

Knowlarity competitors in the cloud telephony space Exotel Techcom Pvt. Ltd and Ozonetel Systems Pvt. Ltd have also made acquisitions in the last couple of years. Last year, Exotel acquired Voyce, a platform that helps businesses collect customer feedback, as part of its efforts to strengthen its customer service offerings, and voice based social media startup Croak it.

In 2014, Ozonetel acquired the speech recognition business of Yantra Software, a provider of speech and voice technology products and services. Startups that cater to small businesses in India have garnered some investor interest over the last year, with Snapbizz Cloudtech Pvt. Ltd which devises technology for grocery stores, raising $7.2 Million in an investment round led by venture capital firms Jungle Ventures, Taurus Value Creation, Konly Venture and Blume Ventures.

Google acquires start-up Synergyse

Google has acquired a business technology startup founded by an Indian origin entrepreneur as part of its plans to scale training offerings for Google Apps to its customers and customer’s users. It acquired Toronto based Synergyse which was launched in 2013 with an aim to teach users how to use Google Apps.

The Google apps product suite, which includes Gmail, Calendar, Drive and Docs, was built to provide cloud based productivity and communications and is now used by more than two million paying businesses around the world. Synergyse built a virtual coach inside of the Google Apps interface.

With voice and text interactive modules that are searchable by topic within its apps, Synergyse will help users get up to speed quickly including when new features are rolled out. Synergyse will help our customers with the critical task of change management in the enterprise, and bolster the training and support programs.

Snapdeal acquires TargetingMantra

Snapdeal.com, India’s second largest e-commerce company has acquired TargetingMantra (Insightful Pvt. Ltd) Gurugram based marketing and personalization Services Company for an undisclosed amount.

The Targeting Mantra team comes with valuable experience in driving superior customer experience through machine learning. The companies did not disclose the financial details of the transaction. The TargetingMantra team will help in building the customer experience solutions that will personalize shopping experiences for customers.

Founded in March 2013, TargetingMantra specializes in building products for enhancing customer buying experience, increasing conversion rates through intuitive product discovery, recommendations and channel selection. Snapdeal, founded in 2010 has become the biggest local rival to Flipkart. It raised $200 Million from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and others in February and with this round of investment the company’s valuation has risen to $6.5 Billion.

CarDekho buys Volob Technologies

Jaipur based Girnar Software Pvt. Ltd which owns and operates online portals CarDekho.com, Gaadi.com and Zigwheels.com has acquired Volob Technologies, a virtually reality startup in all cash deal. The deal size was undisclosed.

This is the third acquisition that the company has made this year. In April, it bought SaaS Startup Connecto and roadside assistance start-up Help on Wheels Pvt. Ltd in a cash and stock deal. Volob was founded in 2010 and provides 3D visualization solutions to various industries, primarily automotive, and this acquisition will strengthen 3D visualization capabilities of CarDekho by use of virtual and augmented reality.

CarDekho.com acquisition of Volob is aimed at amplifying the visual experience of car buyers in both real and virtual settings. GirnarSoft has enriched its value proposition for online buyers, dealers and OEMs. CarDekho, which is currently valued at $380 Million, raised funds from Google Capital and Hillhouse in March. The company that started out as a portal for used cars branched out to provide new car services after it acquired Gaadi.com in 2014.

Revenue generation for the company is greatly dependent on advertisement revenues from the new car segment. The strategy to move to the new car segment was adopted by rival CarTrade.com that acquired CarWale.com in 2015 and also raised Rs950 crore in a round led by Singapore based investment firm Temasek and March Capital this year. As part of its expansion plans in India, CarDekho is looking to add value added services. It launched insurance, accessories and tyres last year, in addition to roadside assistance services.

DriveU acquires CallAtHome

Humble Mobile Solutions Pvt. Ltd which operates on demand driver’s portal DriveU has acquired Gurgaon based driver booking platform CallAtHome (ANS Technologies Pvt. Ltd) for an undisclosed amount. DriveU will now have a presence in Gurgaon and over 500 driver partners with the acquisition a number it hopes to double by the end of this year.

DriveU started operations in Bengaluru in July 2015, and has a presence in Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi. The company, which raised $1 Million from Unitus Seed Fund and undisclosed angel investors in Silicon Valley in February, provides drivers to people so that they can use their personal vehicles, a model that’s in contrast with that taxi aggregators like Ola and Uber Technologies Inc. which are promoting the concept of people foregoing the use of their cars.

DriveU has completed 30,000 trips. DriveU charges consumers a flat fee of INR 99/hour. Drivers get 80% of the fee while the company retains the rest as commission. The average booking period is about four hours. The focus so far has been on Tier 1 Cities where car owners prefer to be chauffeured around than drive themselves. DriveU is also looking to expand this base to a network of 100,000 drivers in 20-30 cities in two three years.