MockBank acqui-hires Litoro

MockBank Learning Pvt. Ltd, a test preparation start-up for government jobs has acquired Vijayawada based web and mobile services company Litoro Tech Solutions Pvt. Ltd.  The purchase is part of a so-called acqui-hire strategy in which one company buys another to gain access to the target talent pool rather than its products and services.

Litoro was founded in 2012. In September, MockBank raised $400,000 in a seed round of funding led by Blume Ventures. Singapore based angel fund Mercatus Capital and angel investors such as SlideShare co-founder Amit Ranjan and Bain and Co. India chairman Srivatsan Rajan also participated in the round.

MockBank focuses on jobs related to the banking financial services and insurance sector, including public sector banks, Reserve Bank of India and Life Insurance Corporation of India. MockBank also plans to explore categories like civil and judicial services, engineering and teaching. The company claims to have more than 100,000 users over 5,000 among them being paying customers. MockBank charges customers between Rs. 150 and Rs. 6000 depending on the services.

India has become the largest e-learning market after the US, and the sector is projected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 17.4% between 2013 and 2018, twice as fast as the global average. At least 73 companies in the online education segment have raised institutional capital this year. About $63 Million have been pumped into this sector since 2014, while Simplilearn which has raised $28 Million, and Toppr with about $12.2 Million.

Flipkart acquires FX Mart

India’s largest e-commerce firm Flipkart has bought payment services start-up FX Mart Pvt. Ltd, which holds a prepaid wallet license, so as to add a payment service on its platform and on that of its unit Myntra. Singapore registered Flipkart Payments Pvt. Ltd, paid Rs. 45.4 crore for a majority stake in FX Mart and two senior Flipkart executives also joined the board of FX Mart.

FX Mart owns a coveted prepaid license issued by Reserve Bank of India. The license will allow Flipkart to offer a digital wallet on its app and avoid paying a cut to external wallet providers. The license can also potentially help Flipkart increase the proportion of cashless transactions. A majority of shoppers still prefer paying cash for online purchases, which creates operational headaches for e-commerce companies.

With FX Mart License, Flipkart which has been a laggard in payments plans to launch a payment service on its app as well as Myntra within the next three months. The company also plans to offer the payment service on third party sites and apps later. The current market leader is Paytm followed by a host of smaller firms such as Oxigen Services India Pvt. Ltd and One MobiKwik Systems Pvt. Ltd.

India has several others payment services start-ups including Citrus Payments Solutions Pvt. Ltd, PayU Payments Pvt. Ltd, CCAvenue and Zaakpay. FX Mart offers electronic payments, foreign exchange and travel services. FX Mart is Flipkart second acquisition in digital payments. It bought another payments start-up NGPay last year.

Microsoft to set up cloud data centre

Cloud Computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network. There are different types of clouds such as public, private and hybrid. The main benefit of cloud computing is that the device is location independent. Users can access systems from anywhere in the world.

In the recent news, Microsoft is said to be considering setting up a cloud computing data centre in India. If it does so, then Microsoft will be first MNC to set up cloud data centre in India. At present, many companies in India are employing Microsoft’s cloud computing services. All these data centres are located abroad. Their functionality is limited by the fact that the RBI guidelines prohibit the storing of customer data outside of India’s borders. This is the sole reason for limiting the adoption of cloud based services companies in India, mainly those companies that offer financial services.

Microsoft’s cloud computing is the fastest growing segment of the company. India is one of the fastest growing markets of cloud computing solutions in the world. It is growing with double and triple digits every few months. Even if Microsoft becomes the first MNC to set up a data centre in India, global competitors such as Amazon and Google are sure to follow and give them a tough fight. All three companies have cloud data centres in Asia at only one place, Singapore. Globally Microsoft has 13 data centres, Google has 12 and Amazon just 8.

It is interesting to note that even though internet users are growing at fast clip in India but none of the biggies has set up their data centres in India. It may be because of issues of infrastructure and power supply. This is the reason companies set up their cloud data centres in Malaysia or Singapore where infrastructure is good as compared to India.