Paytm acquires TicketNew parent Orbgen Technologies

Digital payments giant Paytm has acquired Orbgen Technologies Private limited, the entity that operates TicketNew, a Chennai based online ticketing platform. With the acquisition, Paytm is seeking to connect its more than 300 Mn customers to TicketNew partner cinemas and further invest in helping grow their occupancy and revenues.

Paytm claimed that its entertainment arm has increased its online penetration in India by more than 50%. The company has also built a strong business in south India and is working exclusively with iconic single screen theatres and regional multiplex chains including Suresh Productions, V Celluloid, SVC, and Anusri Cinemas among others in the region.

Inc42 had earlier reported that the digital payments giant was inching towards advanced talks with the Alibaba Pictures-owned TicketNew to acquire the company. The value of the deal was pegged at $30 Mn-$40 Mn. Alibaba Pictures, the entertainment arm of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group, had acquired a majority stake in TicketNew on June 5, 2017, making the acquisition its first outside China in the Internet ticketing industry.

Prior to this, Paytm Entertainment had a ticketing partnership with SPI Cinemas, which owns landmark properties such as Sathyam Cinemas, Le Rêve, and The Cinema, in Chennai, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

CureFit Healthcare acquires Fitness First

Healthcare and fitness start-up CureFit Healthcare Pvt. Ltd has bought Oaktree Capital backed fitness chain Fitness First to expand its presence in Delhi and enter the lucrative Mumbai market.

CureFit will retain the Fitness First brand and add 10 fitness centres to bring its overall centre count to 50 fitness outlets. The firm will sell food subscriptions and its products to users of Fitness First. CureFit currently operates in Bengaluru and NCR.

Fitness First is the latest acquisition for CureFit, which previously bought boutique fitness brands Cult and The Tribe, yoga chain a1000yoga as well as Bengaluru-based kitchen Kristys Kitchen to launch its food business. CureFit was founded in 2016 by Bansal, who was co-founder of fashion retailer Myntra, and Nagori, ex-chief business officer at Flipkart. Bansal and Nagori worked closely at Flipkart after the company bought Myntra in 2014.

CureFit was in talks to raise $75 million from new and existing investors to expand its fitness and food verticals and enter new businesses. The company has so far raised $55 million in equity and debt from Accel Partners, IDG Ventures, Kalaari Capital, UC-RNT Fund and others.

Microsoft acquires Semantic Machines

Microsoft is betting big on Artificial Intelligence. The Redmond, Washington based technology giant announced the acquisition of Semantic Machines, a company focused on building conversational AI. The move could help give Cortana the leg up it needs on competitors like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

Semantic has previously worked with major tech firms, leading automatic speech recognition development for Apple’s Siri. In essence, Semantic employs machine learning in order to provide context to chatbot conversations, making dialogue seem a bit more natural and better-flowing.

Microsoft is by no means the only company trying to make strides when it comes to artificial intelligence and its smart assistants. Amazon, for example, is trying to give Alexa a better memory, while Google is making bots so human-esque that they’re practically indistinguishable from humans during phone conversations with its new Duplex offering.

Adobe to acquire Magento

Adobe plans to get into the online shopping business by paying $1.68 Billion for e-commerce Company Magento commerce. Adobe is known for its Photoshop tools. But it’s quickly expanding into other businesses as it looks for new areas of growth.

Companies like Canon and designer Paul Smith use Magento’s technology to operate their online stores. Both Adobe and Magento share similar customers like Warner Music Group, Coca-Cola, and Nestlé, Adobe said. Having similar customers is significant because Adobe can better cross-sell its various tools and services.

Magento, founded in 2007, was acquired for an undisclosed amount by eBay in 2011. A few months after eBay split with digital payment processing company PayPal in 2015, eBay sold its enterprise software unit, including Magento, to investors Sterling Partners and Permira Funds for $925 million. Last year, Magento raised $250 million from Chinese investment firm Hillhouse at a reported private valuation of $700 million.

Salesforce is the 10,000-pound gorilla in this space with revenue across its various clouds reaching more than $8 billion last year. The company is on a run rate to exceed $10 billion in 2018. It has set a long-term company goal to reach $60 billion in annual revenue by 2034.

EarlySalary buys CashCare

Pune based online lender EarlySalary has acquired Mumbai headquartered startup CashCare, which gives consumer loans through non-banking financial companies, for an undisclosed amount.

CashCare analyses a user’s shopping and wallet data to instantly convert online purchases into EMI-based loans without credit card. This is known as checkout finance. The company has partnered 30 companies whose products the user can purchase, such as MakeMyTrip, ShopClues, Byju’s and HP. For financing the loans, it has partnered non-banking financial companies.

Owned and operated by Social Worth Technologies Pvt. Ltd, EarlySalary was founded in 2015. The three-year-old startup offers a mobile app that allows salaried individuals to avail instant loans for an average tenure of 30 days or till the next salary cycle. Users can avail these loans in the form of salary advances or credit card cash withdrawals. The mobile app is available on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

The company claims to be doing about 25,000 loans a month, disbursing about Rs 60 crore monthly. In its most recent fundraising, the Pune-based company raised Rs 100 crore ($15.7 million) in a Series B round led by Eight Roads Ventures India in January. Existing investors IDG Ventures India, Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd. (DHFL) and Ashok Agarwal, director of forex and money transfer services firm Transcorp International Limited, also participated in the round.

Gannett to acquire WordStream

Gannett Co., Inc. has entered into an agreement to acquire WordStream Inc., a provider of cloud-based software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for local and regional businesses and agencies to optimize their digital marketing services campaigns. The transaction builds upon Gannett existing data-driven digital marketing services, ReachLocal and SweetIQ.

WordStream helps thousands of businesses to harness the power of Google, Facebook and Bing by leveraging its discovery and recommendation technologies, intelligent campaign optimization, and online training programs in its cloud-based SaaS solutions. These Do-It-Yourself (DIY) solutions provide businesses and agencies the ability to manage and optimize performance and results on paid search and social advertising campaigns.

WordStream is a proven innovator and delivers a world-class customer experience. Through WordStream, ReachLocal and SweetIQ, Gannett will now be able to provide the full spectrum of digital marketing services from DIY to managed service to any local or regional business or agency.

The market for digital marketing services in the U.S. is over $90 billion and consists of both large and small clients. The addition of WordStream best-in-class DIY SaaS solutions significantly enhances Gannett capabilities and expands addressable market.

Infibeam to buy Snapdeal’s Unicommerce

Ahmedabad based Infibeam Incorporation Ltd will acquire Snapdeal’s subsidiary Unicommerce, which offers e-commerce enablement software, in a deal worth up to Rs 120 crore.

Last year, Snapdeal dumped a $950-million takeover offer from Flipkart, with Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal saying the company will pursue a fresh strategy in the Indian market. As a part of this Snapdeal 2.0 plan, it has sold its payment services unit Freecharge to Axis Bank for Rs385 crore, while its logistics arm—Vulcan Express—was acquired by Kishore Biyani’s Future Supply Chain Solutions in an all-cash deal valued at Rs35 crore.

According to Infibeam’s filing, Unicommerce eSolutions had a net worth of Rs24.63 crore and turnover of Rs20.27 crore as on 31 March. Founded in 2012, Unicommerce offers e-commerce enablement software for warehouse management and omni-channel services and has over 10,000 sellers, brands and online retailers as its clients.

Infibeam operates in e-retailing (Products business) through its flagship website infibeam.com and has Web Services business that covers software development services, web development, maintenance through BuildBazar and access to digital payment gateways amongst others.

Cognizant acquires Hedera Consulting

IT firm Cognizant has acquired privately held Hedera Consulting, a move that will strengthen the former consulting and digital transformation capabilities for clients in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Founded in 2009, Hedera specializes in business advisory and data analytics services across sectors, helping clients in areas like growth strategy, innovation, marketing, sales and customer service. In 2015, Hedera started an additional business line focusing on analytics and data excellence. With offices in Belgium and the Netherlands, the company has served clients across countries including Italy, Switzerland, the Nordics and UK and the Middle East.

By joining forces with Cognizant, Hedera are even better positioned to help clients define their strategy; transform their businesses and gain insight and competitive advantage in their fast-changing, highly competitive marketplaces. Our combined industry and local knowledge and experience, as well as our strong joint team, will better enable our customers in the Belgian and Dutch markets to extract meaning from their data and use it to effectively shape their products, services and experiences.

In the Belgian and Dutch markets, companies are re-designing their business and IT operating models for the digital era. Hedera Consulting expands our ability to help these European clients create agile and digitally transformed enterprises that can act and react to the oceans of data for deeper customer insight, new product development, and to innovate and exploit new business opportunities.

Oracle buys Vocado

Oracle has acquired Vocado, a California based firm that offers student-centric, cloud based financial aid solution for higher education institutions. Post-acquisition, Vocado will be integrated with Oracle Student cloud platform.

Vocado works with thousands of financial aid sources to optimize funding for any type of higher education learning model. The solution helps students identify eligibility and obtain financing so they can achieve their academic goals. Vocado integrates its financial aid solution with both cloud and on-premise Student Information Systems (SIS).

Oracle Student Cloud is the software major’s next-generation, cloud-based SIS designed for all academic models across every stage of the modern student lifecycle. Vocado adds the most advanced financial aid solution with a highly-automated and scalable platform. Together, their solution offers institutions the most complete SaaS solution suite in higher education, the company said in the statement.

This is Oracle’s second acquisition in the month of April. Just a week back the firm announced the acquisition of Grapeshot, an intelligent software solution for the marketers that help them decide their ad inventories. Grapeshot’s Contextual Intelligence Platform enables the rapid creation of highly-customized segments that allow marketers and their agencies to confidently avoid unsafe content that will damage brand equity, and close the loop via Moat Measurement. The platform also helps marketers extend global audience reach by targeting the most relevant context, including late-breaking news and trending themes, to complement Oracle Data Cloud’s custom audience segments.