Freshworks acquires Zarget

Enterprise software firm Freshworks Inc., previously Freshdesk, had acquired Zarget, a website analytics start-up backed by marquee Investors including Sequoia Capital. This marks the ninth acquisition for Freshworks in less than three years. It had acqui-hired chatbot start-up Joe Hukum, data integration platform Pipemonk and social media customer service firm Airwoot, among others.

Founded in 2015, Zarget offers tools to businesses and marketers to understand user behaviour on websites. According to the company, its suite of solutions—which include a click map of visitors, tests to determine the webpages that are doing better and other patented tools deployed through Google Chrome extensions—deliver actionable insights to increase user engagement.

Zarget was started by former Zoho executives Arvind Parthiban, Naveen Venkat and Santosh Kumar and is based in Chennai. The start-up received a seed investment from Freshworks’ Mathrubootham and went on to raise $7.5 million over two rounds from Accel Partners, Matrix Partners India and Sequoia Capital India.

Zarget was built to help marketers make informed decisions on their online properties without the need for deep technical resources or large budgets. Together with Freshworks, Zarget expect to accelerate the digital marketing evolution and help our customers further transform the way they market with combined expertise and solutions.

Twitch acquired ClipMine

In an announcement about a set of new discovery tools, Amazon-owned video game streaming site Twitch also unveiled that it recently acquired Palo Alto-based video indexing platform ClipMine. The startup’s technology is now being put to use to translate visual information in videos – like objects, text, logos and scenes – into metadata that can help people more easily find the streams they want to watch.

Launched back in 2015, ClipMine had originally introduced a platform designed for crowdsourced tagging and annotations. The idea then was to offer a technology that could sit over top videos on the web – like those on YouTube, Vimeo or DailyMotion – that allowed users to add their own annotations. This, in turn, would help other viewers find the part of the video they wanted to watch, while also helping video publishers learn more about which sections were getting clicked on the most.

The company later pivoted to focus on the e-sports industry, with tools that could extract information from game videos like player names, game type, number of gaming sessions per stream, and more. It also shifted away from the idea of crowdsourcing to take advantage of other technologies, like computer vision and machine learning.

Twitch’s interest in the company’s deep learning-based video indexing platform was due to its ability to analyze video content – like gamer’s streams – to identify what’s taking place in those streams, who’s playing and other variables. It has now put this technology to use with the launch of new stream discovery tools for Blizzard Entertainment’s “Overwatch” and “Hearthstone.” In the directories for those game streams, viewers are able to filter channels by a number of factors, including by hero on “Overwatch” streams, by game mode, player rank, number of wins, and by hero class on “Hearthstone” streams.

Genpact acquires OnSource

Business process outsourcing firm Genpact Ltd has acquired US based OnSource, an inspection-as-a-service (IaaS) provider for the insurance industry, for an undisclosed amount. The deal will help Genpact gain access to advanced digital inspection technologies to claims management services.

Genpact, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, said the transaction builds upon its recent acquisition of BrightClaim and National Vendor that have expanded its US claims management capabilities. Massachusetts-based OnSource caters to property and casualty insurance companies and their customers.

OnSource enables insurance companies to analyze the claims through photo inspections. Policyholders and claimants can use self-inspection apps or OnSource network of photo field inspectors and quality assurance analysts. OnSource ability to disrupt insurance claims operations is a critical addition to our digital-led insurance service offerings.

In 2016, more than 40% of Genpact revenues were derived from clients in the financial services industry, which includes insurance, according to its annual report. Genpact started its operations as a captive business process services provider for GE’s financial services business. The company began to servicing outside clients from 2005. In 2016, business process services contributed 81% to its total revenues of $2.57 billion. Most of Genpact employees are based out of India. It has centres in Gurugram, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Kolkata.

Facebook acquires Ozlo

After shutting down one of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems as chatbots defied the human generated algorithms and started communicating in their own language, Facebook has acquired an AI startup Ozlo to enhance its Messenger’s Personal assistant.

The four-year-old California-based startup that specializes in understanding text-based conversations claims that its virtual assistants can understand and provide answers to questions which do not have simple “yes” or “no”. Ozlo has raised $14 million from a number of investors. The startup has 30 employees, majority of whom would be joining Messenger in Facebook’s offices in either Menlo Park (California) or Seattle (Washington).

The social media giant on Sunday pulled the plug on its AI system because things got out of hand. The AI did not start shutting down computers worldwide or something of the sort, but it stopped using English and started using a language that it created. Initially, the AI agents used English to converse with each other but later, they created a new language that only AI systems could understand, thus, defying the purpose of the researchers. Earlier this year, Messenger’s product head Stan Chudnovsky said Facebook was focused on text-based AI because voice conversations like that of Apple or Google required an extra step.

BookMyShow acquires Nfusion

Online entertainment ticketing company BookMyShow has acquired video-on-demand platform Nfusion for an undisclosed amount, a move that will help the Mumbai based firm enhance its audio streaming offerings.

Nfusion was set up in the Middle East in 2009 by Shoaib G.M. Khan, Sivagurunathan S. and Prabhakar Reddy. The HD video- on-demand platform allowed users to stream videos online. Dar said that strengthening the audio offerings is part of BookMyShow efforts to become a complete entertainment destination. Nfusion had a library of 1.5 million songs and are now making available curated music that will help listeners discover many more tracks.

Kuber will play an instrumental role in driving partnerships with music labels and distributors, creating exclusive audio content for BookMyShow users, and product marketing. In 2013, BookMyShow had acquired Chennai-based online ticketing player TicketGreen. It then acquired a majority stake in Bengaluru-based social media analytics start-up Eventifier in 2015 and Chennai-based fan relationship management (FRM) solutions provider, Fantain Sports in 2016.

In 2017, BookMyShow acquired Hyderabad-based online movie ticketing platform MastiTickets, invested in Pune-based DIY platform Townscript and also acquired Mumbai-based local food and restaurant recommendation engine, Burrp.