Flipkart’s Myntra acquires Jabong

Flipkart Ltd has acquired Jabong through its unit Myntra in a cut-price deal that values the online fashion store at $70 Million, moving to preserve its position as India’s No 1 e-commerce marketplace in the face of an onslaught by Amazon India. Jabong had been valued at $508 Million in 2013.

For Flipkart – Myntra, the acquisition of Jabong will boost sales at a time when Flipkart is struggling to revive growth and struggling to protect its leadership in a market where Amazon has made rapid strides. Jabong offers more than 1500 international high street brands, sports labels, Indian ethnic and designer labels and over 15,000 styles from more than 1000 sellers.

In September 2014, German investor Rocket Internet merged Jabong with four other online fashion retailers in Latin America, Russia, the Middle East, South East Asia and Australia to create GFG. GFG, which is jointly owned by Rocket Internet and AB Kinnevik, houses the German e-commerce company’s fashion businesses from emerging countries, including Jabong, Latin America Dafiti, Russia Lamoda, Namshi in the Middle East and Zalora in South East Asia and Australia.

Earlier this month, Jabong expedited its sale process as Kinnevik and Rocket Internet were reluctant to pump more capital into the company in a gloomy e-commerce market. Jabong, which matched larger rival Myntra in sales until early 2014, has ceded market share since then, as Myntra parent Flipkart spent lavishly on advertising and discounts to lure customers.

Microsoft to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 Billion

Microsoft Corp. agreed to buy LinkedIn Corp for $26.2 Billion in its biggest ever deal, combining the software giant fast growing cloud service business with an online network of 433 million professionals. The offer of $196 per share represents a premium of 49.5% to LinkedIn Friday closing price.

Microsoft plans to speed-up monetization of LinkedIn by growing individual and organization subscriptions as well as targeted advertising. Despite the rich premium paid by Microsoft, LinkedIn is selling for well below its peak of more than $270 per share in 2015, but a weak forecast earlier this year sent its shares tumbling and slowing online ad revenue. LinkedIn went public in 2011 at $45.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest and most valuable professional network and continues to build a strong and growing business. Over the past year, the company has launched a new version of its mobile app that has led to increased member engagement, enhanced the LinkedIn newsfeed to deliver better business insights, acquired a leading online learning platform called Lynda.com to enter a new market and rolled out a new version of its recruiter product to its enterprise customers. 

Quikr to acquire CommonFloor

Online classified portal Quikr India Pvt. Ltd is in the final stage of discussions to buy real estate portal CommonFloor.com in a share swap deal. The valuation is expected to be in the range of $120 Million to $200 Million.

CommonFloor owned by maxHeap Technologies, in January raised an undisclosed amount from Google Inc. venture arm Google Capital in a deal that valued the company at around $200 Million. The other investor in CommonFloor is Accel Partners. Tiger Global, which has over the past one year, invested in scores of big and small Indian Startups is currently in the process of pulling back from big ticket investments.

Tiger Global is re-allocating its investments to stronger companies in its portfolio, including Quikr which is in process of realigning its business, creating new business verticals across real estates, automobiles and jobs, among others. Quikr has so far raised $346 Million from investors such as Investment AB Kinnevik Tiger Global, Steadview Capital Management and Matrix Partners India.

CommonFloor has so far raised more than $60 Million from Accel Partners, Tiger Global and Google Capital over multiple rounds. According to some investors, the sector saw a churn after Softbank backed Housing.com owned by Locon Solutions Pvt. Ltd, raised large amount of Capital and invested heavily in marketing and advertising, pushing other companies to follow suit.

Flipkart acquires AdIQuity

Indian E-commerce giant made its first acquisition of the year; acquired Bengaluru based AdIQuity, a global mobile ad network enabling app developers and mobile publisher’s revenues from their mobile inventory. AdIQuity is backed by VC’s like Sequoia Capital and has raised $15 Million across two rounds in 2006 and 2008.

Founded by IITian Anurag Dod, AdIQuity also facilitates ad agencies, ad networks, DSPs and other media buyers to acquire global mobile traffic. The nine year old venture claims to have 150 Million monthly active users in its network spread across 200 countries generating 25 Billion ad impressions every month. The country’s most valuable startup, valued at $11 Billion is seeking to expand its presence and capabilities by the inorganic way this year. The AdIQuity acquisition will enable.

Flipkart to boost its external marketing capabilities as it aims to diversify into online advertising and brand consulting for vendors. The additional revenues from these verticals would help Flipkart in becoming profitable prior to a listing. Having kicked off the acquisitions, it would be worth looking at the newer capabilities the company would be looking at. Last year, to strengthen its fashion vertical it bought out Myntra in one of the largest deals in the startup space.

Recently, Snapdeal acquired premium and luxury fashion retailer, Exclusively.com and Wishpicker.com, an online gift recommendation portal. While Amazon picked up a minority stake in Gift card Technology and retail firm, QwikCilver Solutions.

Pinterest acquires Kosei

Facebook knows who you were. Google knows what you want now. Now, Pinterest yearns to know what you want next, which is exactly why it acquired recommendation engine startup Kosei. For an undisclosed figure, Pinterest gets Kosei tech that understands 400 Million relationships between 30 Million products, and the majority of its 10-person team including its co-founders.

Kosei team will spend their first 90 days figuring out where to apply them across black ops spam deterrence, product discovery and recommendations, visual object recognition, ad click prediction for monetization, growth analytics, and building a machine learning system on spark for Pinterest data team. It can supercharge Pinterest existing graph to help brands reach people at the right moments and improve content for pinners.

Kosei products allowed customers to make better product recommendations on their sites, apps, and in ads. By looking at what user had browsed or purchased previously, Kosei machine-learning engine could compare that against commerce data sets, and predict what someone was most likely to want to buy next.

From improving the accuracy of its ad targeting to recommending better pins to appear on user’s home pages, machine learning is crucial to Pinterest future. While companies like Google get easy cues like search queries to determine what people want to see, Pinterest has to bet based on what it knows about people from their past behaviour. However, with the right machine learning algorithms, user next favorite recipe, watch, or, quote could be waiting on the Pinterest home page.

Zomato acquires Urbanspoon

Online restaurant guide Zomato has stepped into lion’s den in the United States with an estimated $60 Million (Rs 370 cr) acquisition of Seattle based food portal Urbanspoon. This deal will bring into direct confrontation with Yelp. This is Zomato sixth acquisition in the last six months and their first in 2015. Zomato is also in talks to raise $100 Million after this deal.

Urbanspoon is an IAC owned restaurant information and recommendation service that operates in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Hence, this acquisition also establishes Zomato presence in Australia and Canada, while adding to its position in United Kingdom and New Zealand. After the acquisition, Zomato will be present in 22 countries across the world. Its restaurant coverage will increase from about 300k restaurants to more than 1 Million restaurants across the globe.

The teams will be working closely over the coming months to integrate Urbanspoon into Zomato. In due course of time, all Urbanspoon traffic will move to Zomato.com, and all Urbanspoon app users will be able to use the Zomato app. This acquisition also has a lot to offer to restaurant business. Zomato hyper local advertising model, combined with the Zomato for Business app suite, will allow restaurant businesses to reach out to, connect with, and engage customers like never before.

This is the biggest acquisition of Zomato in the last six months. It has recently acquired local restaurant search player in New Zealand, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Italy. The startup is likely to be valued at about $1 Billion after completing the fresh round of investment. With their aggressive expansions in the world, investors are planning to invest more in the company. After this acquisition Zomato is in clear competition with Yelp, which is a public listed company and world largest.

Snapdeal acquires Wishpicker.com

After raising USD 627 Million from Japan Softbank online marketplace Snapdeal.com, owned by Jasper InfoTech Pvt. Ltd. has acquired gifting recommendation technology platform Wishpicker.com for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition of Wishpicker comes seven months after Snapdeal acquired Doozton, a social product discovery technology platform. Wishpicker is Snapdeal fifth acquisition. The company had earlier acquired Grabbon.com, esportsbuy.com, and shopo.in.

Wishpicker offers gifting options based on different parameters like relationship with recipient, their age, and personality. The current acquisition enables Snapdeal to enter into the personalized gift segment. Wishpicker brings with it an edge to the premier market place. Snapdeal, an intelligent recommendation user experience is helping users to discover the unique gift ideas from across the internet. Users can also find gift suggestions based on a person’s social media activities like Facebook “likes” and other interests listed on social media.

With over 30 million members and more than 50,000 sellers, Snapdeal.com delivers products to 5,000 cities and towns in India. Snapdeal has received funding from several global marquee investors like Softbank, Blackrock, Temasek, eBay, Premji Invest, Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Ratan Tata, Nexus Venture Partners, and Kalaari Capital.

Snapdeal currently claims to offer more than five million products across 500 plus categories on its platform. The firm aims to expand its merchant base to one million in the next three years. Online retail is valued at $3.1 Billion and is estimated to grow to $22 Billion in five years. Snapdeal has now become one of the fastest growing and among the top three online marketplaces in India.  

Future Group acquires Nilgiris

Nilgiris is a supermarket chain in South India. It is also one of the oldest supermarket chains in India with origins dating back to 1905 and hence its products are sold under the brand name of ‘Nilgiris 1905’. Unlike all other supermarkets and grocery shops in India, Nilgiris sells its own products among other brands. Kishore Biyani Future Group acquires the iconic brand. Future Consumer Enterprise Ltd., the food and FMCG arm of the Future Group, paid around Rs.300 crore for the acquisition.

Nilgiris operates a franchisee operated convenience store chain with 140 stores in key metros across the four states. Private equity firm Actis had bought 67 percent stake in Nilgiris in 2006. Apart from a wide assortment of products sold through its convenience store chain, Nilgiris also owns a portfolio brands in dairy, bakery, chocolates, and staples along with their manufacturing facilities in Bengaluru.

Bangalore based Nilgiris is an iconic brand that enjoys wide household recall in the southern states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala. This acquisition is synergistic as it enables strengthening and expanding of convenience stores through franchise model is an asset light model. It brings in new manufacturing capabilities and brands within the company as well.

Existing portfolio of brands of FCEL including Sunkist, Tasty Treat, Golden Harvest, Premium Harvest, Sach Ektaa, CleanMate, and CareMate, will be channelized through Nilgiris store network. It operates 8 distribution centres along with a fleet of vehicles, including refrigerated vehicles that cater to the supply of its own dairy, bakery, and chocolates brands to its network of stores. FCEL is a part of Future group that operates modern retail network in 102 cities and 40 rural locations through retail brands like Big Bazaar, Central, Foodhall, Brand Factory, among others as well as various consumer goods, logistics networks and infrastructure for the consumption sector in India. 

L & T Technology to acquire Dell engineering services

Larsen and Toubro Limited is an Indian Multinational Conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The company has business interest in engineering, construction, manufacturing goods, information technology, and financial services. It was recognized as the company of the year in Economic Times 2010 Awards.

Dell is an American privately owned Multinational computer technology based in Texas, United States. It sells personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals, cameras, printers, and electronics built by other manufacturers. Company is well known for its innovation in Supply chain Management and E-commerce business.

L & T Technology services is going to buy Engineering services division of US based Dell Inc. The deal has got the nod of Competition Commission of India (CCI) and is waiting for approvals from US regulatory. This acquisition will help L & T establish itself as a premier engineering services provider by adding local delivery centres in North America. This strategic acquisition will strengthen L & T technology services global position in the $4 Billion transportation engineering research & development market.

Dell engineering services has delivery centres in Hyderabad and Bangalore, India. According to a comment mentioned by L & T chief executive Keshab Panda has said that the company will not spend more than $50 Million on any acquisition. In June this year, L & T Technology services acquired 74 percent stake in Thales Software India Pvt. Ltd. to grow its avionics Business. Recently, L & T said that it is planning to start its IPO process for both its technology subsidiaries i.e. L&T InfoTech and L&T Technology services by 2016.

This is the first acquisition this year in technical industry by an Indian company acquiring US Company. Other than this, Indian Internet firms are expanding their business internationally and one of them is Zomato. Jabong has already entered into UK market with a small office in London. Rocket Internet Printvenue is also entering into Australian and Singapore market.