Binatone acquire Gecko Maker Connovate

Binatone communications Group is a Hong Kong based consumer electronics and Personal Care Products Company. Connovate Technologies is a Bangalore based startup company and the maker of Gecko device. Gecko is a Bluetooth device. Recently, Binatone has acquired Connovate Technology for an undisclosed amount.

After this deal, Connovate will merge with Binatone subsidiary Hubble connected and will get access to the 1500 stores in United States and 1000 in Europe that Binatone has a presence in. Gecko will be bundled with home, pet, and baby monitoring solutions that Binatone sells under Motorola brand. Connovate becomes the first Indian Startup to have an exit in the inter of things domain, a technology that represents a truly connected world where all devices talk to one another.

Last year, in November Connovate had raised $135,410 through the crowd-funding platform Indiegogo. At the time, it had also received pre-orders for 7500 devices, mostly from US, UK, and Germany, including 500 from India. Gecko allows people to control and spot various objects around them using a smartphone. Besides tracking, the device can also be used to trigger a camera, change music using gestures, motion detection, and smart leash.

Connovate other product is Weight Smart, which is quite similar to FItbit Aria except that it uses Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi. The device comes with its own custom app using which a person can log weight and even connected to Run Keeper to create some actionable information from it. Gecko is a coin-size, square shaped device that connects with the smartphone via Bluetooth and allows users to control multiple things such as household items and electronic appliances through the smartphone.

Foreign companies are looking for acquiring startups in India to grow their business. Yahoo had acquired Bookpad a US based startup with operation in Bangalore. Facebook acquired Little Eye Labs Pvt. Ltd. in January. Google acquired Impermium, and Naspers Ltd. acquired online bus ticketing company RedBus in 2013.

Yahoo buys Startup Bookpad

Acquisition of Indian software product startups by Facebook, Google, and Yahoo over recent months is the tipping points for Indian Entrepreneurs. Bangalore based Bookpad become the first Indian Tech Startup to be bought by Yahoo. The US Internet giant who is in line to reap about $9.5 Billion from Alibaba IPO has bought the firm in a deal worth around Rs 50cr. Yahoo has so far bought 100 companies.

Bookpad is competing with large companies like Google and Crocodoc in document viewing. It allows users to create and edit files from within their apps. It supports all popular documents formats and works on desktops as well as mobile devices. It runs on HTML 5. With this acquisition, we can expect Yahoo to bring Google Docs like features in its Yahoo Mail service so that users can edit and share documents. This means when you receive documents in the mail, you can open, edit, save documents on the cloud.

Yahoo bought seventeen companies after Marissa Mayer took over as CEO. Bookpad was originally named as Docspad, where users can create spreadsheets, slideshows, from the web and save them on cloud or in their mail. In January, Facebook also acquired Bangalore based Little Eye Labs. It became the first Indian Firm to be acquired by Facebook. According to some news, Walmart, Target, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, and Goldman Sachs are among also looking for suitable matches.

Several global bodies are engaging with industry bodies like Nasscom and iSpirt to reach the right startups. According to a report, Google senior Vice President Sundar Pichai attended a roundtable organised by Nasscom, where he might with eight startups companies of his interest. Nasscom is also looking to organize the same roundtable for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who is set to visit India this month. A year before, US companies were not looking towards Indian companies but now most of them are looking towards Indian start-ups to grow their business.