IBM bought Red Hat

IBM’s purchase of Red Hat Inc. is a $33 Billion bid aimed at catapulting the company into the ranks of the top cloud software competitors. The cash deal, IBM’s biggest ever by far, boosts the 107-year-old computer-services giant’s credentials overnight in the fast-growing and lucrative cloud market — and gives it much-needed potential for real revenue growth.

The company once synonymous with mainframe computing has been slow to adopt cloud-related technologies and has had to play catch-up to market leaders Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in offering computing and other software and services over the internet.

IBM has seen revenue decline by almost a quarter. While some of that has been from divestitures, most is from declining sales in existing hardware, software and services offerings, as the company has struggled to compete with younger technology companies.

Revenue at Red Hat, which sells software and services based on the open-source Linux operating system, is expected to top $3 billion for the first time this year as the company’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux product attracts business from large customers. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lazard Ltd. advised IBM on the deal. Morgan Stanley and Guggenheim Partners were financial advisers to Red Hat, while Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom provided legal advice.

Zydus to buy Heinz India Business

Zydus wellness, a part of the Ahmedabad headquartered Zydus group, announced plans to acquire Heinz India, known for its brands like Complan, Glucon D, Nycil and Sampriti Ghee.

Apart from the four iconic brands, Heinz India’s business comprises two large manufacturing facilities in Aligarh and Sitarganj and teams devoted to operations, research, sales, marketing and support. Heinz India also has a strong network of over 800 distributors and more than 20,000 wholesalers covering 29 states.

For the four brands, Heinz India recorded revenues of about Rs 1,150 crores and EBIDTA of about Rs 225 crores for the 12 month period ending 30 June 2018. Following this acquisition, Zydus Wellness will have consolidated revenues of about Rs 1,700 crores. The transaction is proposed to be financed by a mix of equity and debt. Select leading private equity firms have committed to partnering the transaction by way of equity support.

The acquired brands have a strong market presence and a legacy of over 50 years. Glucon D, first launched in 1933, is the leader in the energy drinks segment in India. Complan, a household brand in the health food drink category, was introduced in India in 1969 as a milk-based health food drink. Launched in 1951, Nycil is the number one prickly heat powder with a pan-India presence.

Zydus Wellness has a presence in food, nutrition and the skin care markets and owns brands like Sugar Free, EverYuth and Nutralite. This will be the second acquisition for Zydus Wellness following the acquisition of Nutralite, India’s largest selling premium healthy fat spread, in 2006.

InMobi acquires Pinsight Media

InMobi has acquired Pinsight Media, a mobile data and advertising company in an all-stock deal. InMobi says that this is a part of the partnership with US Telco Sprint in regards to devices, data, media and marketing. The acquisition will help InMobi with better targeting, engagement and retention through network level mobile data from mobile apps and browsers, through its InMobi Marketing Cloud product.

Pinsight is a subsidiary of Sprint, which offers ad products and services to US Telco’s and advertisers across consumer goods, retail, entertainment and finance. Its services include getting new audiences, finding market opportunities and engagement strategies. It claims to get mobile data from 32 million mobile users from the network.

InMobi now has expanded its operations in North America to Kansas City along with the existing operations in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. In January this year, InMobi acquired US-based mobile video ad startup AerServ for $90 million in a cash and stock deal. Post this, the company’s video and programmatic business accounted for 35% of the overall company revenues. In June, it also partnered with Microsoft wherein InMobi moved to Microsoft Azure as its cloud provider and would also collaborate for technology and marketing strategies.

Samsung acquires network analysis firm Zhilabs

Samsung Electronics announced its acquisition of Zhilabs, known for its Artificial Intelligence (AI) based network and service analytics, to further enhance its 5G capabilities. The acquisition lays the foundation for Samsung to foster its 5G offerings of automation and network analytics to finely tune the customer experiences in the 5G era.

AI-based automation will play a central role in the introduction of new services in the 5G era, such as industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and connected cars, as carriers will require automated solutions and network analytics beyond what was possible in previous generations. AI-based transformation can be used to analyze user traffic, classify application being used, and improve overall service quality, as such needs can no longer be addressed by existing solutions.

Samsung is looking forward to joint capabilities to create new cutting-edge technology in the transformation from 4G to 5G. In addition to the acquisition, Samsung will continue to strengthen its automation solutions that measure the quality of each user service and can also automatically optimize service quality without human intervention. The company will also explore and invest in other business opportunities powered by the emerging technologies.

In August, Samsung announced plans to boost investments in businesses that will drive its future growth, committing to a KRW 25 trillion investment over the next three years in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, automotive electronics components and biopharmaceuticals.

DailyNinja buys WakeupBasket

Hyperlocal delivery startup DailyNinja has acquired Hyderabad based WakeupBasket in a cash and equity deal. This is DailyNinja's second acquisition; it had bought Hyderabad-based 4amshop in August.

DailyNinja runs a grocery and milk delivery service. It operates both a marketplace and an inventory-led model, and earns revenue from subscriptions. The startup last raised funding in June. It secured $3 million (around Rs 20 crore) in a Series A funding round led by new investor Saama Capital. Existing investor Sequoia Capital had also put in money.

Besides Bengaluru, DailyNinja delivers in Hyderabad and Chennai as well. It fulfills 3,500 orders a day, the statement said. WakeupBasket, operated by Crocksys Technologies Pvt. Ltd, was founded in 2015. It provides morning delivery of household essentials like DailyNinja, besides selling milk and groceries on its platform. The Hyderabad-based startup had raised a seed round from various angel investors and has grown to fulfill 2,500 orders a day.

In January, Gurgaon-based micro-delivery grocery startup Milkbasket raised $3 million (around Rs 19 crore) in funding from Unilever Ventures, the investment arm of consumer goods giant Unilever. Doodhwala, a subscription-based milk and daily essentials delivery startup, secured $2.2 million (Rs 14.27 crore) from impact venture fund Omnivore in February.

Ola’s Foodpanda acquires Holachef

Foodpanda, the online food ordering and delivery startup owned by Ola, has acquired Mumbai based food-tech startup Holachef Hospitality Pvt. Ltd for an undisclosed sum. Foodpanda will take over Holachef’s employees and kitchen equipment’s. 

Holachef marks Ola’s second acquisition within a year, which bought Foodpanda from Germany’s Delivery Hero in December last year. Ola, run by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd, is seemingly leaving no stone unturned to fight it out in the online food ordering space dominated by Swiggy (Bundl Technologies Pvt. Ltd) and Zomato (Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd). Ola rival Uber India Pvt. Ltd too has entered the space with UberEats India.

Foodpanda will foray into cloud kitchens with its acquisitions. It also plans to launch its own food brand across categories. The company claims to have a network of over 1 lakh delivery partners and access to over 150 million customers. Holachef delivers home-cooked food to customers and was operational in Mumbai and Pune. The company, backed by Ratan Tata, Kalaari Capital and India Quotient, had raised $9.6 million cumulatively till date, according to data from Crunchbase.

While India’s food-tech space has seen rapid expansion in the past couple of years, several startups—including TinyOwl, Yumist and Dazo—operating in the domain have shut shop. Bengaluru-based SpoonJoy was acquired by online groceries firm Grofers in 2015.

MobiKwik acquires ClearFunds

Digital payments company MobiKwik has acquired online mutual fund platform ClearFunds as it pivots towards a complete fin-tech company facing tough competition from market leader Paytm, owned by One97 Communications Ltd.

Founded in 2016, Clearfunds (Harvest Fintech Private Limited) is an online mutual fund advisory platform that claims to use data science and analysis to help investors make informed and profitable investment decisions. It claims to have $45 million in assets under management (AUM).

MobiKwik, which has a customer base of 100 million, will now sell only direct plans on its platform that comes without distributor commissions. Paytm Money, the new wealth management unit of One97 Communications Ltd, entered the mutual fund market with its own application in April this year.

The Gurugram-headquartered company will invest $15 million in its wealth management category in the next year to take on competitors like Paytm, which in turn is reportedly looking to offer shares of listed companies directly to customers. MobiKwik recently entered digital lending services by offering 90-second loans to its users in a bid to compete with Soft-bank backed Paytm.