SHL to acquire Aspiring Minds

US-based talent evaluation company SHL announced its plans to acquire Gurgaon based job credentialing platform Aspiring Minds for an undisclosed amount. The deal is expected to close in November and cost somewhere between $80-$100 Mn largely all-in-cash.

Through this acquisition, SHL plans to infuse Aspiring Minds’ artificial intelligence (AI) technology with SHL’s portfolio and leverage the “rigorous science to enable the technical, emerging and leadership talent required” for over 10K customers. Some of the big names in its companies clientele include e-commerce giant Amazon, the telecom operator Airtel, IT company Wipro and US industrial conglomerate Honeywell.

Founded in 2008 by Himanshu Aggarwal and Varun Aggarwal, Aspiring Minds is an employability evaluation and certification company that helps institutions and companies hire the right candidate. The company also allows candidates to take employability test to find the ‘right’ jobs through its flagship product AMCAT. AMCAT is said to serve over two million candidates every year.

The HRTech startup relies on its state-of-the-art, adaptive assessment technology, and machine learning algorithms to allow adaptive, standardized and reliable measurement of generic employability skills, i.e. language, cognitive, behavior, among other functional skills. Currently, the company serves over 3000 clients across the US, China, Philippines, Middle East, and Southeast Asia, among others.

Walmart Labs acqui-hires Int.AI

Walmart Labs, the local product development division of US retail giant Walmart has acqui-hired Delaware based data analytics and machine learning startup Int.AI, its second acqui-hire in India in three months, as it looks to strengthen its engineering team.

Int.AI was founded in 2016. It analyses data and shares it with targeted users over email as well as team messenger tools like Slack. In September, Walmart Labs brought the entire team of engineers from Bengaluru-based Appsfly onboard, which built a system for micro apps to get hosted and streamed on any platform.

Walmart move highlights its keen urge to deepen its presence in the country. The US-based retailer has been investing heavily in the country this year, starting with the game changing $16 Bn acquisition of Indian ecommerce unicorn Flipkart. The company also opened its 23rd wholesale store in Visakhapatnam recently. It claims 19 of these centres have already achieved break even.

Globally, acqui-hiring has been used by large companies to get talent in a new domain it looks to test waters. In 2017, Google acquired Halli Labs, a four-month-old startup out of Bengaluru that was developing artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions. In October, Airtel acqui-hired Authme ID services, an AI-based solution firm.

Go-Jek acquires LeftShift Technologies

Indonesian Bike hailing app Go-Jek has acquired Pune based app development company LeftShift Technologies Pvt. Ltd for an undisclosed amount to strengthen its product development efforts, making its fourth acquisition of an Indian firm.

It helped more than 200 companies design and develops mobile apps, including companies such as BookMyShow, Practo, OYO, Byju’s Classes, Airtel and Emerson. It also counted Go-Jek as one of its customers. The product development centre, which has about 60 employees now, comprises developers, data scientists, designers and product managers who work on mining data and delivering better experiences for consumers.

Go-Jek had earlier acquired Bengaluru-based home healthcare start-up Pianta in August. In February, the firm announced that it bought Bengaluru-based software engineering company C42 Engineering India Pvt. Ltd and Delhi-based development and operations company CodeIgnition Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd for engineering talent. These deals are so-called acqui-hires, which is jargon for an acquisition made to gain access to the employees of the acquired company.

Go-Jek offers stock options to the employees of its acquired companies that vest over four years. Go-Jek was started by Harvard graduate in 2011 and is the first Indonesian start-up to achieve the “unicorn” status after a $550 million funding round in August led by KKR and Warburg Pincus.

Bharti Airtel Buys Augere

Bharti Airtel has agreed to acquire Augere Wireless Broadband India, as the nation’s top telecom carrier looks to consolidate its 4G footprint ahead of the launch of similar high speed broadband services by rivals such as Vodafone India, Idea Cellular and Reliance Jio Infocomm.

Upon acquisition Augere will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Airtel. Augere had won a block of 20 MHz of 4G spectrum in the Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh circle for Rs 122.46 crore in 2010 auctions. The company owned by France Telecom and a clutch of private equity funds such as Harbinger Capital and New Silk Route initially announced plans of rolling out 4G services in late 2011.

The latest move will allow Airtel to expand its 4G high speed broadband footprint ahead of the 4G launch by Reliance Jio and Vodafone, scheduled for December. Idea launch is slated for early next year. Airtel had bought airwaves in the 2300 MHz band in Kolkata, Maharashtra, Punjab and Karnataka in the 2010 spectrum auctions and later acquired chip-maker Qualcomm airwaves in another four circles of Delhi, Mumbai, Kerala and Haryana.

Both 4G and 3G spectrum are critical for the next phase of growth of mobile phone operators as mobile data increasingly replaces voices as the main growth driver for them. Airtel posted almost 80% growths in its mobile data revenue in the first fiscal quarter through June. In March, Airtel entered into a partnership with China Mobile, the world’s largest telecom operator. 

Airtel Acquires YTS Solutions

Bharti Airtel Ltd has acquired financial solutions firm YTS Solutions for an undisclosed amount and announced appointment of the latter co-founder Manish Khera as CEO of its mobile wallet service Airtel M Commerce Services. The acquired business will be integrated with the operations of Airtel Money Services Ltd.

Based out of Mumbai, YTS has been developing financial products focused on mass market and micro-transactions. This acquisition will expand Airtel portfolio in the mobile commerce segment and bring in a host of new product capabilities targeted at migrants in urban cities and their families in rural towns and villages.

The acquisition, the first such by an Indian Telco in the mobile commerce segment, will help in expanding the portfolio of Airtel Money, a mobile wallet, even as the Telco awaits the Reserve Bank of India decision on its application for a payments bank license. The acquisition is the first of its kind among Telecom service providers who offer mobile wallets.

In 2011, AMSL announced the launch of Airtel Money and in January 2015, it applied for a Payment Bank License. Airtel, India’s largest mobile operator with a customer base of over 230 Million, covers 430,000 towns and villages backed by 1.5 Million distribution outlets. Other Telecom providers such as, Vodafone has M-Pesa, Idea Cellular has Idea Money and Tata Teleservices has MRupee, and all of them compete with the likes of Paytm, MobiKwik, PayU and Oxigen for a share of the fast growing mobile commerce pie.