Sony acquires Zee’s TEN Sports

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (ZEEL) announced the sale of its sports network TEN Sports to Sony Pictures Network (SPN) in all cash deal for $385 Million. TEN Sports portfolio includes TEN 1, TEN 1 HD, TEN 2, TEN 3, TEN Golf HD, TEN Cricket and TEN Sports. The network operates these channels across India, Maldives, Singapore, Hong Kong, Middle East, and Caribbean.

TEN Sports network is currently held by company’s two wholly owned subsidiaries – Taj Television Limited, Mauritius and Taj Television (India) Pvt. Limited. The acquisition of TEN Sports network will strengthen SPN offering for viewers of Cricket, football and fight sports, complementing portfolio of international and domestic sporting properties.

Sony current sports properties include Cricket (IPL, CPL, Ram Slam), Football (FIFA 2018 World Cup Russia, UEFA Euro 2016, FIFA World Events including FIFA U-17 World Cup 2017 in India, European and South American Qualifiers for FIFA WC 2018, FIFA Confederations Cup, LaLiga, Serie A, FA Cup, Copa America Centenario, International Champions Cup), Tennis (Australian Open, ATP 1000 and 500 World Tour Events, Champions Tennis League), fight sports (TNA, UFC, Pro Wrestling League), Basketball (NBA) as well as NFL and Premier Futsal.

As for TEN Sports, the network holds broadcast rights to major cricket boards (South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies and Zimbabwe). TEN Sports has rights to wrestling (WWE), football (UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, French League, English Football League Cup), Tennis (WTA Events, ATP Events), Golf (European Tour, Asian Tour, Ryder Cup, US PGA Championship, LGPA Tour, Professional Golf Tour of India and Golf Channel Block), Athletics (Asian Games, Commonwealth Games), Motor Sports (MotoGP) and Cycling (Tour de France) events.

CureFit acquires controlling stake in Cult

CureFit, a healthcare and fitness start-up has acquired a controlling stake in Cult, which operates two fitness centres in Bengaluru for $3 Million. Started in 2015, Cult tries to differentiate itself from traditional gymnasiums by offering fitness training in the form of martial arts, kickboxing, and other such activities. It doesn’t use traditional gym equipment such as trademills and weights.

Cult, which will continue to run as an independent brand run by Telang, plans to expand to five centres by the end of the year and 25 centres by December 2017. Cult has a unique training model where the trainers mix and match various formats to deliver a holistic fitness regime. The traditional fitness formats are a thing of the past and trainer led group classes are something which will change the face of the fitness industry.

People are moving towards functional training from the traditional ways of gymming. Cult offers a differentiated solution which is very attractive for customers who are bored with gyms. In July, CureFit raised as much $15 Million in Series A funds from Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners and IDG Ventures, one of the most largest early rounds of funding even by an Indian start-up.

CureFit, which has 12 employees, plans to launch an app in the March quarter of next year that will first offer preventive healthcare services. The company is finalizing tie-ups with offline health and fitness service providers before its launch. It may make more acquisitions to boost its offline presence.

China firm buys Media.net

A group of Chinese investors has acquired ad-tech startup Media.net for about $900 Million in cash with plans to eventually sell the company to an obscure telecommunications firm whose shares have been suspended from trading since last year.

Media.net, which is based in Dubai and New York, is touting this as the third largest ad-tech acquisition in history. The company provides the technology powering contextual ads offered by Yahoo and Microsoft Bing search Engine. The system is similar to one offered by Google, choosing which ads to show based on the content of the web page they appear on.

Media.net generated $232 million in revenue last year, more than half of which came from mobile visitors. The US accounts for 90 percent of Media.net revenue, but the company is hoping to make a big push into China after the deal. The consortium buying Media.net is led by Zhang, the chairman of Beijing Miteno Communication Technology. His telecom firm has been moving aggressively the transition through an acquisition. 

Quikr India acquires Zapluk

Online classifieds portal Quikr India Pvt. Ltd has acquired on-demand beauty and wellness services provider Zapluk (ZapForce Technologies Pvt. Ltd) for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition of Hyderabad based Zapluk which had raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from a clutch of investors, comes three months after Quikr India acquired Gurgaon based on demand beauty service provider Salosa.

Quikr India rebranded its home beauty service as AtHomeDiva in July. The acquisition of Zapluk is expected to strengthen Quikr home beauty services, which have now been rolled out to Bengaluru, New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Gurgaon and Hyderabad. The home beauty services are part of QuikrServices, one of the five verticals identified by Quikr last year to grow revenue.

Quikr is focusing on five key business segments – automobiles, real estate, jobs, services and customer to customer sales. It has identified as new sources of revenue and fends off competition from other venture capital backed businesses that have emerged in each of these categories. Zapluk was founded in August 2015. The firm had acquired Chennai based competitor Pamperazi in June this year.

The company has been investing aggressively to build the five verticals it has identified by both acquiring start-ups and making strategic investments, especially in real-estate segment. Quikr has so far raised $346 Million from investors such as Tiger Global Management, Warburg Pincus and Norwest Venture Partners, among others and is currently valued at $1.5 Billion. 

Microsoft buys AI Startup Genee

Microsoft Corp. is betting big on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make the software and services smarter. The company has announced the acquisition of AI powered scheduling tool Genee, and will be integrating these capabilities in future versions of the Office 365 cloud based productivity suite.

Before Microsoft swooped in, Genee offered virtual personal assistant services in two ways, first through email and second as messaging chatbots on SMS, Facebook, Twitter and Skype. For example, if you may want to meet a friend for lunch sometime in the next few days, all you need to do is mark Genee in “cc” in the mail you send to the friend. Genee will detect that you need to find the time for the meeting, will scan your calendar, and directly mail your friend with multiple time options. If there are any updates to the calendar leading up to meeting time, Genee will update all parties involved, automatically.

Genee uses natural language processing algorithms to understand the contents of a conversation. And this could come in very handy for Microsoft as it looks to enhance its virtual assistant Cortana, which rivals Google’s Now and Apple’s Siri. Also, Microsoft would do well to add the AI capabilities on to the Office 365 suite and make the Outlook mail service smarter.

This ties in well with Microsoft’s recent acquisition of the Sunrise Calendar app, a more powerful and feature rich calendar app, with automatic scheduling features, which gives Office 365 a big advantage. Enterprise and productivity apps as well as services are critical for Microsoft as the company wants to create a niche for itself in a smartphone market which is now undoubtedly dominated by Google Android and Apple iOS platform. 

Pfizer to acquire Medivation

Pfizer Inc. is close to an agreement to buy Medivation Inc. for about $14 Billion. By acquiring Medivation, Pfizer would gain a blockbuster prostate cancer treatment, Xtandi, that’s already approved for sale in the US and elsewhere, and that analyst project will generate $1.33 Billion in annual sales by 2020.

A $14 Billion purchase of Medivation would be Pfizer’s biggest deal since buying Hospira Inc. for about $17 Billion last year, and the company is a rare prize. As oncology becomes one of the hottest areas in drug development, large drug and biotechnology firms have found only a few mid-sized targets with revenue generating, approved treatments.

Medivation also comes with two experimental products a drug for breast cancer and another for the blood cancer lymphoma. The breast cancer drug belongs to a class of treatments known as PARP inhibitors, which disrupt cancer cell’s process of DNA repair. The drug, talazoparib may well be the most potent medicine in the PARP class, with estimates annual peak sales may reach $3 Billion.

By spurning Sanofi initial offer, valued at about $9 Billion, Medivation was able to bring in more potential suitors and drive up the bidding. Gilead Sciences Inc., Celgene Corp. and Amgen Inc. were among the other drug makers reported to consider the deal.

Piramal Enterprises to acquire Ash Stevens

Piramal Enterprises Limited wholly owned subsidiary in the US has entered into an agreement to acquire 100% stake in Ash Stevens Inc. a US based Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) in an all cash deal for a consideration of USD 42.95 Million plus an earn out consideration capped at $10 Million.

Ash Stevens has over 50 years of experience in contract manufacturing and serves several biotech, mid-size pharma, and large pharmaceuticals clients worldwide. With over 60,000 sq. ft. of facilities, eight chemical drug development and production laboratories, and six full scale production areas, Ash Stevens has built a stellar reputation, led by science, driven by operational excellence, and one that emphasizes quality as a culture.

Ash Stevens has an impeccable safety record of working with high potency anti-cancer agents and other highly potent therapeutics. The state of the art manufacturing facility in Michigan features all necessary engineering and containment controls for the safe handling and cGMP manufacture of small and large scale HPAPIs. Ash Stevens is well poised to become the partner of choice for clients looking to advance programs from early development through launch. 

Boomtrain acquires Nudgespot

Boomtrain, an artificial intelligence based marketing platform has acquired Nudgespot, a Bengaluru based messaging platform founded by Myntra co-founders for an undisclosed sum. Both firms had partnered nine months ago to build a product that helps enterprises communicate better with their customers and visitors on website and mobile apps.

The acquisition of Nudgespot will accelerate Boomtrain strategy to enable AI powered communications between businesses and their customers. This is the first productized messaging application that will be fully integrated into a marketing suite. This gives marketers the ability to incorporate multi-channel chat functionally, combined with AI platform, to facilitate personalized, scalable conversations with their customers.

Nudgespot and Boomtrain are pushing the envelope when it comes to bi-directional messaging technologies. Teaming up with Boomtrain will continue to extend offering to more businesses in need of advanced, easy to use B2C messaging solutions. With the addition of Nudgespot, Boomtrain significantly expands its APAC business. Together Boomtrain and Nudgespot will have 70 people in offices located in San Francisco and Bangalore and will continue to expand its footprint globally.

Pigeon Express to acquire GoJavas

Courier service provider Pigeon Express Pvt. Ltd is in advanced talks to acquire e-commerce focused logistics service provider GoJavas (Quickdel Logistics Pvt. Ltd) which suspended operations last week amid an organization overhaul, in a cash stock deal.

GoJavas, which counts Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) as a key investor, had started scouting for possible suitors after a bid by Snapdeal for a complete buyout fell through. Besides Pigeon Express, the company had also held talks with another Delhi based courier service provider, Trackon Couriers Pvt. Ltd.

Delhi headquartered Pigeon Express was founded in 2004. The company handles doorstep pickup and delivery of bulk packets, parcels and other consignments, essentially competing with larger rivals such as DHL, DTDC and Bluedart. The company claims to handle 1.2 lakh deliveries every day and has 135 delivery centers across the country. Snapdeal and Jabong together accounted for more than 80% of GoJavas overall business.

Logistics and supply chain are the backbone of e-commerce firms as sound infrastructure helps reduce delivery costs and ensures faster delivery which in turn helps win over customers. GoJavas primarily competed with Flipkart’s logistics firm eKart, Delhivery, Ecom Express Pvt. Ltd and Dotzot, the e-commerce focused arm of DTDC. 

Microsoft acquires Beam

Microsoft has acquired Beam; a Seattle based interactive game streaming service that lets viewers play along with streamers as they watch. Beam’s model takes the mostly passive interaction that streaming fans may be used to form services like Twitch and YouTube adds the ability for viewers to interact with the streamer via crowdsourced controls.

Players interacting through Beam can direct the play of the person streaming, doing things like setting which weapon load out they take into battle for multiplayer shooters. Visual controls provide viewers the ability to help players pick quests, and you can even assign challenges that alter the gameplay considerably from what you’d get via a typical play through.

Microsoft Beam acquisition is an attempt to strengthen company Xbox gaming service. Microsoft says it is bringing Beam interactive technology into the Xbox family to make Xbox Live more Social and fun. Beam interactive streaming platform can be enabled with any game. With Minecraft for instance, Beam users can not only see their favorite streamer but can also play along with them.

Microsoft has been steadily acquiring startups and big name tech organization in order to strengthen some of its core services. Earlier this year, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for a record $26 Billon in order to better connect with professionals and expand its productivity services. With Beam, Microsoft would try to strengthen its core Xbox Live service while Beam will gain resources to build its product into a bigger game streaming platform.

UrbanClap acquires GoodService

You may soon be able to book services on UrbanClap with a simple chatroom message as the hyperlocal start-up has acquired Delhi based concierge start-up GoodService. It is currently on merging the operations.

As for GoodService, the mobile app has vanished from Apple and Android app stores, while its website redirects to UrbanClap and says that the services are verified by it. The Facebook page of the startup also seems to be out of service, with the post published in early May. The existing users of the app have also not got any response on their service requests since May.

GoodService, used to offer local services such as beauty professionals and cooking classes. The users could order these by initiating a chat with the GoodService app agents, much like contacting a friend for a favor. The company had raised $1.6 Million in funding from Sequoia Capital in June 2015.

The GoodService platform can prove beneficial for UrbanClap, which has been working on an algorithm that asks a series of questions on each category, to make customization of service offerings more accurate. A chat service will allow the company a deeper insight into customer behavior. This is UrbanClap second acquisition within this year, after the mobile based services marketplace acquired after sales service platform HandyHome in an equity swap deal.

Intel acquires Nervana Systems

Tech giant Intel has acquired California based deep learning start-up Nervana Systems run by an Indian origin Entrepreneur, allowing the chip maker to foray into the world of Artificial Intelligence. Nervana has a fully optimized software and hardware stack for deep learning.

Nervana Engine and silicon expertise will advance Intel AI portfolio and enhance the deep learning performance. Intel has the best semiconductor technology in the world. Nervana AI expertise combined with Intel capabilities and huge market reach will allow Intel to realize vision and create something truly special. Intel will apply Nervana software expertise to further optimize the Intel Math Kernel Library and its integration into industry standard frameworks.

With this deal, Intel will now shatter the old paradigm and move into a new regime of computing. The semiconductor integrated circuit is one of humanity crowning achievements. Intel is one of the world largest and highest valued semiconductor chip makers based on revenue. Buy selling to Intel, Nervana has access to technology.

Randstad to buy Monster

Recruitment Company Randstad Holding NV will acquire Monster Worldwide Inc. for $429 Million in a bid to widen the portfolio of Human Resource services it offers. The deal value is a significant comedown from the $7.5 Billion valuation the company demanded in 2006 and marks the acquisition of yet another icon of the first internet boom.

Yahoo’s core business was recently bought by Verizon for $4.83 Billion. Monster will retail its brand and work as an independent entity. Randstad will buy all of the outstanding shares of Monster for $3.40 per share in cash. Monster recently acquired Jobr, Japanese firm Recruit Holdings, though Indeed.com acquired Simply Hired.

It is also a reflection of the changes sweeping through the HR services business where customers are looking for integration much in the same way they do in IT services. The Dutch multinational human resource consulting firm with operations in 39 countries said Monster will continue to operate as an independent entity and will continue to operate under the Monster Brand. Monster has 3700 employees in the 40 countries that it is present in.

Companies like Monster have been hit by multitude of factors in recent times such as the economic slowdown around the world has had an impact on job sites like Monster as companies are making fewer hires. This coupled with professional networking sites and the rise of social media hiring by companies has meant that fewer people take to job sites.

Wal-Mart to buy Jet.com

Wal-Mart stores Inc. agreed to buy e-commerce startup Jet.com Inc. for about $3 Billion in cash, giving the world’s largest retailer the resources for a stronger shopping website to compete with Amazon.com Inc. the online market leader.

The deal also includes $300 Million in Wal-Mart shares that will be paid over time. Acquiring Jet.com, which achieved a $1 Billion gross merchandise run rate in a little more than a year, gives Wal-Mart a website that processes an average of 25,000 orders a day and is adding 400,000 shoppers monthly.

Wal-Mart has spent billions expanding its online operation, including hiring thousands of workers, opening two offices in Silicon Valley and building large e-commerce distribution centers. It also started an annual subscription service similar to half the price to Amazon Prime. Amazon’s $99 a year service provides free two day shipping on millions of items, encouraging shoppers to stay on the website, as well as the company’s video entertainment offerings.

Hoboken, New Jersey based Jet.com has distinguished itself in e-commerce through “gain sharing” luring buyers to add items to their orders to reduce shipping costs, and to pay with debit instead of credit cards to reduce transaction fees. Traditional store based mass retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target Corp. and Costco Wholesale Corp. have been struggling to lend off Amazon’s momentum in online shopping.

Apple to buy Turi

Apple Inc. acquired Artificial Intelligence startup Turi Inc. for about $200 Million in the latest deal by the iPhone maker to accumulate advanced computing capabilities for its products and services.

Turi helps developers create and manage software and services that use a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) called machine learning. It also has systems that let companies to build recommendation engines, detect fraud, analyze customer usage patterns, and better target potential users. Apple could use this to more rapidly integrate the technology with future products.

Formerly known as Dato, Turi raised more than $25 Million from venture capital investors including New Enterprise Associates and Madrona Venture Group, according to CrunchBase. Apple has purchased multiple firms over the past couple of years that specializes in Artificial Intelligence. The company has also begun to integrate these technologies into products such as its iPhone software and Siri.

In January, Apple acquired Emotient, a startup that uses AI to recognize and act upon facial expressions. Last year, Apple acquired a pair of voice centric AI startups, VocalIQ and Perceptio, to bolster Siri. VocalIQ specialized in using machine learning to allow voice assistants to engage in more realistic conversation. Perceptio focused on helping AI systems run on devices while sharing limited amounts of personal user data.