Pine Labs in talks to buy Qwikcilver

New Delhi based online retail payments platform Pine Labs is in talks to acquire Bengaluru digital gift card firm Qwikcilver Solutions, as the former looks to creating a strong footing in the gifting space.

Pine Labs is looking to acquire Qwikcilver for over $100 Mn in a mix of cash and stock deal. Once the acquisition deal materializes, the existing investors in the company are expected to cash out, while the founders of the company may stay on with the team. Launched in 2008, Qwikcilver helps retail and corporate customers to enhance their sales, brand and loyalty through card-based interventions such as Gift Cards, Loyalty Cards, Discount Cards, Frequency Cards and Credit Cards. It also provides a cloud-drive software-as-a-service for various brands.

The company claimed to have handled gift-card transactions worth INR 3K Cr ($422 Mn) with 160 Mn transactions in 2016. In the same year, Qwikcilver had raised undisclosed funding led by Sistema Asia Fund, the proprietary fund of Russian conglomerate Sistema. Prior to that, Amazon had invested $10 Mn in Qwikcilver Solutions. Overall, the company is believed to have raised $20 Mn. It also counts Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners among its investors.

The acquisition of Qwikcilver may give Pine Labs an edge in offering gift cards to small-and medium-sized stores with card payment facilities. The Indian gift card market is expected to reach $80 Bn – $85 Bn by 2024. Of which, e-gift cards are expected to account for a lion’s share with $70 Bn. Pine Labs was launched in 1998. The Sequoia Capital-backed fintech company counts many large corporates among its clients. It provides an integrated payment gateway services to its partners. It claimed to be processing about 450 Mn transactions worth over $15 Bn annually, as of March 2018.

Oyo in talks to acquire FreshMenu

Gurugram based hospitality chain OYO Hotels and Homes is in talks to acquire Bengaluru based cloud Kitchen startup FreshMenu in a deal worth $50 Mn - $60 Mn. FreshMenu shareholder Zodius Capital may be paid in cash while, the founders and investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and GrowthStory will be allocated Oyo shares, if the deal is finalized.

If the deal goes through successfully, Oyo will make its foray into online food delivery business. The move is said to enhance its hospitality business portfolio and food is an essential element to its operations. Bengaluru-based FreshMenu had been looking to raise capital for the last few months. The deal is being considered as a win-win proposition for both the companies.

Oyo is building a food team, which will help FreshMenu expand to more cities under the Oyo brand name. The idea could be more about adding the element of food to further build the hospitality business rather than getting into the food delivery entirely.

FreshMenu clocks about 15,000-20,000 orders daily and if Oyo acquires the startup kitchen, it will leverage highly on the company's infrastructure of 170,000 rooms across India. Oyo's advanced rounds of these discussions with FreshMenu follow after it recently rose close to $1 billion from Japan's SoftBank with participation from ride-hailing companies Grab and Didi Chuxing taking up its valuation to $5 billion.

Apple buys Pullstring

Apple agreed to buy Pullstring, a startup that enables the design and publishing of voice apps, as the tech giant seeks to compete more effectively with Amazon and Google in voice empowered apps. A group of former Pixar executives founded Pullstring in 2011 to make interactive voice apps for toys before expanding into Internet of Things (IoT) products.

Pullstring makes software tools for voice apps, and artificial intelligence to power those experiences and toys such as Mattel’s talking Barbie and Thomas the Tank Engine toys. The company was criticized in 2015 for creating “child surveillance devices,” but said its products had security features to protect privacy

Pullstring technology may help Apple to strengthen ties with app creators and gain broader developer support for Siri, which is critical for offering voice-enabled services that will encourage consumers to use its virtual assistant. Apple pioneered voice-enabled technology with the introduction of its Siri virtual assistant more than seven years ago, but the company has fallen behind Amazon and Google in voice-powered platforms like smart speakers that work as hubs for connected homes.

Amazon has a 70% share of the U.S. smart-speaker market with its Echo devices. Google Home trails with 24% of the installed base while Apple's HomePod is a distant third with only 6% of the market. Apple risks losing out on the growing market for IoT devices and services without a stronger presence in smart speakers.

Byju acquired Osmo

Tencent backed online learning platform Byju is looking to leverage Osmo, the Silicon Valley startup it recently acquired for $120 Million, to build capabilities in technologies such as computer vision and artificial intelligence.

Osmo, founded by former Googlers specializes in using computer vision for creating blended learning games for kids. While the startup will be able to leverage Byju’s content, the Bengaluru-based firm will get access to Osmo’s tech smarts.  Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field in which computers are trained to extract, analyze and understand digital images or videos, with the intent of replicating what humans can do.

Byju’s DNA is predominantly offline (and content), and even today a bulk of their distribution remains offline. Osmo will help the company develop a tech lens in the product offering. Osmo’s technology can today detect shapes, numbers, letters and even images of characters and objects in relatively real-time, but going forward it says this capability will grow. Imagine a biology classroom where students get step-by-step instructions on how to dissect a frog from software that is watching their every move.

The startup will continue refining its machine vision tools and will add more members to its team to speed up the development of advanced capabilities. Today, Osmo’s software is only trained to recognize pre-programmed images, but in the future, it could make sense of something it is seeing for the first time and throw up relevant content for the student.

Delhivery acquires Aramex

Gurugram based logistics provider for ecommerce companies, Delhivery, has acquired the India Business of Dubai based logistics firm Aramex for an undisclosed amount. Aramex provides logistics for major ecommerce companies such as Amazon India. In 2016, the company had invested in online hyperlocal Delhivery service for restaurants Grab.in, and Jaipur intra-city B2B logistics service provider, Logisure.

Delhivery will now take over Aramex India’s pick-up and delivery shipment operations. However, Aramex will continue to focus on its global competencies of express and freight and will continue the international business in the country. Delhivery was founded in 2011. As of December 2018, the company claimed to be catering its logistics service in more than 600 cities with 12 fulfillment centres for B2C and B2B services.

The startup, which counts Carlyle and Tiger Global as investors, works with ecommerce companies such as Flipkart and Paytm. Speculation was rife earlier that Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund is reportedly looking to acquire 37.87% stake in Delhivery, and has reportedly sought approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

Logistics is the brain behind the supply chain industry. Over the years, startups in this sector have come up with innovative new technologies with logistics-related software solutions, last-mile delivery, robotics, automation solutions. Indian logistics sector is currently valued at $160 Bn and is poised to hit $215 Bn by 2020.

ShopX acqui-hires GabbarDeals

Bengaluru based ShopX, a business to business e-commerce platform for small traders, has acqui-hired GabbarDeals, an omnichannel mobile phone retail brand.

The acquisition gives ShopX the assets, including stores and brand partnerships, of GabbarDeals, allowing it to expand its organized retail operations beyond Tier 1 cities in India. It will launch ShopX Edge, a chain of technology-powered mobile and electronic stores in Maharashtra, where GabbarDeals has a strong offline presence.

GabbarDeals sold phones of different brands online and offline as well. It had stores in Pune and Jalgaon with digitally enhanced features. The company claims to have achieved gross merchandise value (GMV) of Rs 1,000 crore across five years for its mobiles and electronics products.

Run by 10i Commerce Services Pvt. Ltd, ShopX was founded in 2014 by Sharma and Apoorva Jois, who had earlier founded Go Untucked, a startup in the fashion apparel segment. The B2B venture helps local kirana stores and small retailers conduct transactions on a single platform. ShopX primarily operates in three categories, food and groceries, digital and electronic services.

The company has more than 50,000 retailers on its network and currently is present in 300 towns and cities across India. It has three streams of revenue—a small, one-time fee whenever a retailer signs up, a transactional margin on sales from consumer brands on their network and revenues from marketing and brand building activities.

Swiggy acquires AI start-up Kint.io

Online food delivery start-up Swiggy has made its first acqui-hire in the deep technology space through an AI start-up Kint.io for an undisclosed amount. As part of this, the founding team of Kint.io will join Swiggy.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company, which is also foraying into the hyperlocal delivery space, will join Swiggy to boost its computer vision technology and elevate consumer experience. The acqui-hire development comes just a few months after the company closed its mammoth funding round of $1 billion, which was led by Naspers and saw participation from China’s Tencent Holdings.

The round saw Swiggy’s valuation shoot up to $3.3 billion. The company had been on the lookout to close a few acquisitions following the funding round. Founded in 2014, Kint.io applies deep learning and computer vision to object recognition in video. Prior to this, Swiggy had made an acquisition in the food-delivery space through a buyout of on-demand delivery start-up Scootsy in August

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As consumer internet companies in India are growing and raising money, importance is being given to building a more robust technology stack for an enhanced experience. In August, Flipkart acquired AI-led speech recognition start-up Liv.ai as they looked at elevating consumer experience of the next 200 million shoppers. Following this, the Walmart-backed company also acquired Upstream, an analytics company from Israel, in a bid to deliver real-time pricing and product analytics to the platform’s sellers.