Amazon acquired Health Navigator

Amazon.com Inc. has acquired Health Navigator, a medical technology startup, in an effort to bolster its health care offerings for employees.

The start-up will be wrapped into a clinic for workers that launched last month at the company’s Seattle-based headquarters. Called Amazon Care, the program offers virtual and in-person consultations, and delivery of prescriptions to employees’ offices and homes.

The company’s ambitions in health care have been the subject of fevered speculation in the industry and among investors well versed in Amazon’s record of disrupting established industries. Amazon has partnered with Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to launch Haven, a non-profit working on ways to halt the rise in employee health-care costs.

Separately, the company is working to build on nascent businesses that sell to health-care providers and consumers. Amazon last year bought PillPack, an online pharmacy. It also sells office and medical supplies through its Amazon Business program.

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.

Shopify acquires 6 River Systems

Shopify, the shopping technology developer that’s quickly becoming the anti-Amazon, has taken another step up the sales supply chain with its $450 Million acquisition of the warehouse automation and management technology developer, 6 River Systems.

The acquisition will serve to boost efficiencies among Shopify’s Fulfilment Network service, which launched in June. The acquisition gives Shopify access to the robotics experts who helped develop Amazon’s own robotics business when they were at Kiva Systems (before Amazon acquired that company).

Shopify’s fulfillment canters span California, Georgia, New Jersey, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. The network, which is only available in early access, supports merchants that ship between 10 and 10,000 packages per day. The company hopes to eventually support between 3 and 30,000 packages per day. The 6 River Systems acquisition looks like an attempt to speed up that growth.

6 River Systems is best known for its Chuck autonomous vehicles that can move packages in warehouses. Indeed, Shopify believes that adding the robots to its fulfillment network “will increase the speed and reliability of warehouse operations by empowering on-site associates with daily tasks, including inventory replenishment, picking, sorting, and packing.”