Flipkart acquires Upstream Commerce

Flipkart has acquired an Israel based analytics start-up called Upstream Commerce, as India’s largest online retailer looks to help its massive seller base with services such as real-time pricing and product assortment information.

This is Flipkart’s second acquisition in as many months, after the Walmart-controlled e-commerce firm acquired Indian artificial intelligence start-up Liv.ai in August. The latest buyout will also enable Flipkart to have an outpost in Israel, which is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost start-up ecosystems.

Upstream, which counted Israel-based early-stage venture capital firm YL Ventures as its biggest investor prior to the buyout, currently builds cloud-based and automated competitive pricing products and solutions, among other things. With the Upstream acquisition, Flipkart will now have tech and talent presence across Asia, US and Israel, some of the key global hubs for innovation.

Earlier, Flipkart has held talks to buy a stake in Hotstar, Star India’s video streaming service, as part of a broader strategy from Flipkart to bet on video content and attract more Internet consumers and shoppers, without having to build an Amazon Prime Video-like streaming service from scratch.

Amazon acquires online pharmacy PillPack

Amazon is buying online Pharmacy PillPack – a move that could disrupt the drug store business. PillPack has pharmacy licenses in all 50 states. The company delivers medications to customers in pre-sorted doses designed to make it easier for people to take multiple medications a day.

Although brick-and-mortar stores might feel the effects of Amazon's competition, the biggest battles will likely be fought by the mail-order pharmacies, which generally serve patients with chronic conditions such as heart disease that may require drugs to control blood pressure, cholesterol and other problems.

Some of the largest mail order pharmacies are controlled by pharmacy benefit managers such as Express Scripts (ESRX.O) and CVS, which offer financial and other incentives to patients to fill their prescriptions with them. PillPack holds pharmacy licenses in all 50 states and is authorized to deliver in 49 states and is an in-network pharmacy for major Medicare Part D plans.

For consumers, it could be good news if the deal nudges the pharmacy sector into a heated competition for customers, potentially driving down drug prices. Prescription drug spending tops $450 billion annually. Amazon's acquisition of PillPack marks another development in the company's rivalry with Walmart, which had been rumored to be weighing an acquisition of PillPack.

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.