Wings Travels acquires Bookmycab

Pune based Wings Travels wingstravel.in Management Pvt. Ltd, which provides staff transportation services, has acquired taxi services company Bookmycab for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition will help Wings Travels expend into the radio taxi segment and strengthen its technological capabilities.

The merged entity will be rebranded as WingsTravels Bookmycab. It will be run by Mumbai based LiveMinds Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which owns Bookmycab. Wings Travels, which has been operating since 2001, primarily offered staff transports services to business process outsourcing firms. It has about 600 employees and offers its services in Mumbai, Pune, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Nagpur, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad.

The acquisition will help Wings Travels to expand its services to 47 cities in India and offer its radio taxi services in Yangon (Myanmar), Chiang Mai (Thailand) and Vietnam. While its Yangon operations commenced about three months ago, the Thailand operations are likely to start from the first week of May. 

GroupM in talks to acquire Foxymoron

GroupM is the world largest advertising media company in terms of billing. It was formed in 2003 by WPP Group to serve as the parent company of WPP media agencies including Maxus, MEC, MediaCom, and Vocanic. It handles over 32% of the world media billings making it the world largest media investment management operation. Foxymoron was started in 2008 as a summer project between four friends and turned into a digital media and marketing company.

Global media firm GroupM is in talks to acquire Foxymoron for about $30 Million, as it seeks to establish dominant position in India. If the deal becomes successful then it will be the latest buyout transaction in the nascent, but fast growing Indian Digital, social media, and marketing sector. Global Media giant JWT is also scouting for potential acquisitions in the space.

Foxymoron provides an across the board range of services, including, end to end digital services, including design and development and social media services. The potential transaction is part of GroupM strategy to establish an even stronger footprint in the country, where it already has a dominant presence. India’s online advertising market is poised to exceed Rs 3500 crore in revenue in 2015.

Spend on video ads will grow at a compounded annual rate of 56% while contributing 12% to the overall market share of digital advertisements. The principal sources of acceleration in 2015 are China, where GroupM predicts ad growth will get back on track to just fewer than 10%, the US, forecast to pick up to 3.9, the Brazil, the UK, Japan and India. Acquisitions have been an important growth strategy for GroupM, which also acquired Chinese Social media agency Teein last year.

Dentsu Aegis acquires WATConsult

Dentsu Inc. is an International advertising and public relations company whose headquarters are located in the Dentsu Building in the Shiodome district of Minato, Tokyo. The Company origins as a media representative producing the first newspaper advertisements and the first television commercials in Japan. The company now offers a range of services, from traditional and creative marketing to specialty disciplines such as sports marketing, digital contents, PR, and a growing range of communication services.

Dentsu reached an agreement with the principal shareholder of Mumbai based WATConsult, a digital agency, to acquire a 90% stake in the company, which will ultimately be increased in steps to 100%. WATConsult will become part of Isobar, one of the Dentsu Group’s global network brands, and will be referred to as WATConsult linked by Isobar.

WATConsult, founded in 2007 as a Social Media agency, has developed into a digital agency offering services such as digital creative, digital media planning and buying, development of campaigns that utilize social and digital media, production of digital media applications and digital video, and online reputation management. Its clients include Godrej, Tata, Bajaj, Mahindra, SAP, and Nikon. WATConsult employs more than 160 people across the Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Kolkata and has annual revenue of nearly Rs. 30 Crore.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Dentsu Inc, the Dentsu India Group comprises three standalone full service-advertising agencies – Dentsu Communications, Dentsu Marcom, and Dentsu Creative Impact as well as Dentsu Media and Dentsu Digital. Tokyo based Dentsu Inc has a presence in 24 countries across five continents. In 2012, it acquired 51 percent stake in Mumbai based advertising agency Taproot India Communication Pvt Ltd for an undisclosed sum.

Burger King to open stores in India

Burger King is a global chain of Hamburger Fast Food Restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The company began in 1953 as Insta-Burger King. Its two Miami based franchises, David Edgerton and James McLamore, purchased the company, and named it Burger King. The company became public in 2002 and it had over 13000 outlets in 79 countries. In 2010, 3G Capital of Brazil acquired a majority stake in BK in a deal valued at US $3.26 Billion.

In recent news, Burger King will open its first few outlets in India by the end of this year. Company aims to make India, along with China, its biggest market in Asia-Pacific. The outlets will come up in Mumbai and NCR. Coming at a time when rivals like McDonald’s, Domino’s and Yum brand have established a long lead here. Burger King will look to penetrate the untapped smaller towns to gain a toehold in the market. China and India will be two growth engines for the company.

Burger King has a joint venture with Everstone group; a Singapore based private equity and real estate group, to open a few hundred stores in next ten years in India. Burger king formed a joint venture in 2012 to open 1000 restaurants in China by 2015. It recently started selling burgers in Pakistan and Brunei.

Currently, almost 40% of the western fast-food market by value sales lies between Delhi NCR and Greater Mumbai. Burger King and Everstone may look to sub-franchise the brand for airport and railway retailing at a later stage. While Burger King offers vegetarian burgers and spicy bean burgers in UK and Canada, it will unveil a segregated vegetarian menu in India. Nearly two-thirds of Indians now eat out at least once a week, boosting the growth of restaurant industry, which is expected to touch $26 Billion in 2015.