Swiggy acquires AI start-up Kint.io

Online food delivery start-up Swiggy has made its first acqui-hire in the deep technology space through an AI start-up Kint.io for an undisclosed amount. As part of this, the founding team of Kint.io will join Swiggy.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company, which is also foraying into the hyperlocal delivery space, will join Swiggy to boost its computer vision technology and elevate consumer experience. The acqui-hire development comes just a few months after the company closed its mammoth funding round of $1 billion, which was led by Naspers and saw participation from China’s Tencent Holdings.

The round saw Swiggy’s valuation shoot up to $3.3 billion. The company had been on the lookout to close a few acquisitions following the funding round. Founded in 2014, Kint.io applies deep learning and computer vision to object recognition in video. Prior to this, Swiggy had made an acquisition in the food-delivery space through a buyout of on-demand delivery start-up Scootsy in August

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As consumer internet companies in India are growing and raising money, importance is being given to building a more robust technology stack for an enhanced experience. In August, Flipkart acquired AI-led speech recognition start-up Liv.ai as they looked at elevating consumer experience of the next 200 million shoppers. Following this, the Walmart-backed company also acquired Upstream, an analytics company from Israel, in a bid to deliver real-time pricing and product analytics to the platform’s sellers.

Girnar Software acquires PowerDrift

Jaipur based Girnar Software Pvt. Ltd, which owns auto portals CarDekho.com, BikeDekho.com and Gaadi.com has acquired automotive content YouTube channel PowerDrift for an undisclosed amount.

Owned and operated by PowerDrift Studios Private Limited, the YouTube channel uploads videos reviews of cars and motorcycles. The channel has about a million subscribers today. PowerDrift claims to have generated 240 million lifetime views on its channel, with an average of 200,000 views per video.

Girnar Software, founded in 2007 also owns TyreDekho.com and BuyingIQ.com (online shopping adviser). In 2014, Girnar had acquired Naspers Group-owned Gaadi.com. It also bought Zigwheels.com from Times Internet in September 2015. The same year, it invested $1 million in edu-tech startup CollegeDekho.

Besides Gaadi.com and Zigwheels.com, Girnar Software acquired several other companies. These include Drishya360s (virtual reality), Volob Technologies (AR-VR focused visual communications), Connecto (SaaS start-up), Help on Wheels (roadside assistance), Valueserve Management Consultants Pvt. Ltd (consulting firm), and Advanced Structures India (car-testing and benchmarking firm).

Swiggy acquires Scootsy

Food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy has acquired Scootsy, an intracity delivery service provider in an all-cash deal. Scootsy provides delivery service for restaurants, toys & beauty products and electronics items among others.

Scootsy is a well-loved brand that enjoys loyalty from both its restaurant partners and the consumer. With a shared belief of providing a superior user experience, its addition will extend the convenience and reliability that Swiggy is synonymous. Swiggy will strengthen Scootsy curated restaurant network and help the brand expand to newer cities using Swiggy operational strength. Scootsy will continue to operate as an independent app post the acquisition.

For Swiggy, the acquisition of Mumbai-based Scootsy is in line with its vision to provide a superior consumer experience and the widest restaurant choices for consumers. It will extend the breadth and selection of Swiggy existing network of 40,000 restaurants by adding more curated restaurants to it. Scootsy was founded in 2015. Last year, it raised $3.6 million from Agnus Capital and Khattar Holdings.

The acquisition will enable Scootsy expansion across Mumbai and also support its foray into four to five major Indian cities in the coming months. Swiggy, which started in August 2014, is one of the fastest Indian start-ups to reach a valuation of $1 billion. In June, Swiggy announced that it has raised $210 million from a group of investors, led by Naspers and billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global. The fund raise valued Swiggy at about $1.3 billion.

Mswipe acquires PayU offline POS Business

PoS (Point of Sale) solutions provider Mswipe has entered into a strategic partnership with online payment service provider PayU India. Mswipe has taken over the offline merchant acquiring business of PayU India.

Mswipe will merge PayU existing offline PoS division team into its existing operations and workforce expanding its network to 220K terminals across 550+ cities. On the other hand, merchants associated with Mswipe will now be able to avail Internet payments services offered by PayU India. PayU offline merchant acquisition team had acquired over 9,000 offline merchants in the country. All of PayU offline merchants along with its PoS business will also get transferred to Mswipe.

Mswipe is a PoS service provider for a large merchant base. It also allows merchants to undertake plastic card payments through smartphones or ordinary feature phones. Headquartered in Mumbai, the company claims to have a team of 2000. In July 2015, the startup secured $25 Mn (about INR160 Cr) in its Series C round of funding from New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge Capital, investment firm Meru Capital and ride hailing app, Ola, and existing investors.

PayU India is the flagship company of Naspers Group. It was established in 2011 and has over 250 payment methods and PCI (Payment Card Industry)-certified platforms. It claims to have more than 1,800 payment specialists based in local markets supporting PayU 200,000+ merchants and consumers making online payments. In September 2016, it acquired rival online payment gateway CitrusPay for $130 Mn, making it by far the biggest M&A cash deal in Indian fintech. Earlier this month, Kreditech secured $119 Mn (Euro 110 Mn) from PayU.

MakeMyTrip to buy Ibibo Travel Business

Online Travel firm MakeMyTrip Ltd has agreed to buy Ibibo Group’s Travel Business in India for $720 Million in stock, creating one of the largest travel companies in the country. The deal will bring all brands of the Nasper and Tencent backed Ibibo Group such as Goibibo, redBus, Ryde and Rightstay under MakeMyTrip. Together, MakeMyTrip and Ibibo processed 34.1 Million transactions in 2015-16.

The transaction is expected to unlock value for customers, supply partners and shareholders, by combining the complementary strengths of each business. MakeMyTrip brings its strong brand, robust mix of domestic and outbound hotels and packages business and strong position in the air ticketing business. Ibibo Group, via its brand Goibibo and redBus, comes with a strong presence in various fast growing travel segments including hotels, bus bookings and air ticketing. 

The combined entity is valued at $1.8 Billion. Naspers and Tencent jointly held 91% and 9% stake in Ibibo respectively. They will be issued new shares in MakeMyTrip and will become the single largest shareholder in MakeMyTrip, owning a 40% stake and will continue proportionate working capital once the deal is closed.

India is a key market for Naspers. Ibibo and MakeMyTrip have built leading companies through their innovative use of technology to create exceptional experiences for people traveling throughout India and increasingly beyond. Morgan Stanley acted as the financial advisor to MakeMyTrip. Goldman Sachs acted as financial advisor to Ibibo and Naspers while Cravath, Swaine and Moore, Trilegal and BLC Roberts served as legal advisors.

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.

Naspers

Naspers is a South African based multinational mass media company with operations in electronic media and print media. Electronic media includes television, internet, and message subscriber platforms whereas print media includes publishing, distribution, and printing of magazines, newspapers, and books.

Naspers was founded in year 1915 in Cape Town, South Africa. They published their first magazine in 1916 and in 1918 published their first book in the market. In 1997, Naspers created an Internet Service Provider in 1997 and started a blogging platform. In 21^st century, Naspers starting holding stakes in several different companies and finally in 2012 it entered into 2-commerce market in Asian Countries. After their report in March 2014, it was found that Naspers had already taken base over 8 million homes in the continent.

Naspers entered in Indian market after FDI was allowed in the country. In 2 September 2013, Naspers group acquired an 80% interest in RedBus, an Indian online ticketing platform and later in June 2014, the group acquired a 100% interest in RedBus.

In May 2014, Naspers invested a further $51 million i.e. Rs 307 crore into Flipkart. The funding was part of the $210 million raised by Flipkart this year. This funding allowed Naspers to acquire Fashion Retail Online store Myntra. Now Naspers owns 17.7% stake in India’s Flipkart.

Naspers most significant operations are located in South Africa from where it generates approximately 72.7% of its revenues and other significant operations are located in Sub-Saharan Africa, Greece, Cyprus, Netherlands, United States, Thailand, Brazil, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, India, Turkey, China and Romania. The strategy of Naspers is to create media content, build brand names around it, and manage the platforms distributing the content. Naspers then delivers its content in a variety of forms and through a variety of channels, including television, internet services, newspapers, magazines, and books.