Facebook acquires Speech Recognition firm

Facebook Inc acquired wit.ai, a company that makes voice recognition technology for wearable devices and Internet connected appliances, the latest sign of its ambition to extend its reach beyond computers and smartphones. The price for the deal is not disclosed yet. Wit.ai is a company based in Palo Alto, California, which makes software that can understand spoken words as well as written text phrased in “natural language.”

The deal comes as technology companies are racing to bring Internet connectivity to a new crop of devices, from watches to washing machines. Voice recognition, the technology that helps power services such as Apple Inc Siri, is considered a key building block for the new devices to earn mainstream consumer appeal.

Alex Lebrun, Willy Blandin, and Laurent Landowski founded wit.ai. The company announced in October that it had raised $3 Million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. This deal for wit.ai is likely to have been significantly smaller. Facebook rivals Apple Inc, Google Inc, and Microsoft Corp. all have integrated voice recognition technology into their mobile operating systems for smartphones.

Wit.ai technology could allow Facebook users to speak commands that could be converted to text as posts or messages. The technology could have other uses. Facebook already has an optional feature that can recognize music and television shows and encourage users to post about what they are listening to or watching. Facebook mission is to connect everyone and build amazing experiences for the over 1.3 Billion people on the platform technology that understands natural language is a big part of that.

Zomato Acquires Italy Cibando

Restaurant Search Portal Zomato, which raised $60 Million in November and got start up of the year award, has acquired Cibando, one of the Italy’s largest restaurant search services. The company is rapidly expanding its presence outside India. Gurgaon based Zomato Media Pvt Ltd said it will invest $6 Million in Italy over the next two years to grow the team and the business in the country.

Cibando, founded by Guk Kim in 2010, is an online and mobile restaurant search service based in Italy that offers about 7,000 professionally generated reviews and 150,000 photographs taken by food photographers. About 82,000 restaurants are listed on Cibando. The new combined entity will grow to 30-40 people in the next three months and over time the Italy operation is expected to grow to 150-200 people across the top six cities.

With the acquisition of Cibando, Zomato fifth buy this year, the company has a presence in 20 countries. It acquired MenuMania in New Zealand, Lunchtime in Czech Republic, Obedovat in Slovakia, and Gastronauci in Poland this year. It further aims to widen its international presence by entering 15 more countries in 2015. The company has so far steered clear of the US, a market dominated by larger competitors such as Yelp, GrubHub, and Open Table.

Zomato competes with Yelp in markets such as the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Chile. In 2015, it can enter into US too. The company is currently valued at $660 Million. It currently employs over 900 people n around 100 cities across 20 countries. The company gets about 35 Million visits per month across its website and mobile applications. It gets more than half of its traffic from its mobile application. Zomato provides detailed restaurant information such as menus, contact details, pictures, geo-coded maps and user reviews on over 310,000 restaurants.

Times Internet acquires Moneysights

Moneysights founded in 2009, by ex employees of InMobi, Mukesh Kalra, and Santosh Nalvani, was a digital platform where one could buy and manage investments products. In 2012, however, the platform had to close its operations due to lack of funding. Moneysights had earlier raised funds in June 2011 and Times Internet now buys it.

Times Internet is a unit of Bennett and Coleman and Co Ltd. was established in 1999 and operates a portfolio of web and mobile properties that engage millions of users globally. It is currently not clear whether Times Internet plans to revive Moneysights as a separate service or integrate the service to its existing properties like The Economic Times. It is not clear that whether Times Internet plans to keep Moneysights branding.

Moneysights will compete with Aditya Birla group MyUniverse that has a tie up with Network 18 financial information portal Money Control. Online insurance policy aggregator Policybazaar had also launched a financial advisory services platform called Paisabazaar in August this year. The platform sells loans, credit cards, and mutual funds among others.

In previous acquisitions, Times Internet had acquired a majority stake in coupon marketplace CouponDunia in May this year and had merged its deals site with TimesDeal with the company. It had also acquired restaurant-booking service DineOut in April this year. This was after TimesCity had tied-up with DineOut last year to offer table-booking service. it had also acquired Musicfellas.com an online market place for independent artists to sell their songs in February this year.

Times Internet had also invested in shorts, a mobile app for short top stories. It had also funded GradeStack, an online course for students. It also backed Skift.com, a New York based travel intelligence and information portal. Times Internet is a part of The Times of India Group.