Ingenico group buys TechProcess

Ingenico group of France will buy 100% stake in TechProcess Payment services which owns electronic payments platform Billjunction. Ingenico has shelled out approximately Rs600 cr. for the acquisition of TechProcess. Avendus Capital was the advisor to this transaction.

Ingenico is present in the online payments business through its ePayments entity EBS, and has a 50% market share of credit card swipe machines installed in the country. Based on its already leading position in terminal market, Ingenico Group is making, with the acquisition of TechProcess, a major step in India, the fastest growing country in Asia.

Founded in 2000, Mumbai-based TechProcess is an online and mobile payment services provider with approximately 600 employees across 40 locations. It was originally incubated by ICICI Venture and now has investors such as Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners and W Capital Partners. TechProcess offers products and solutions in online payments gateway, National Automated Clearing House, bill payments and mobile payments.

In November, TechProcess partnered with NumberMall, an app-based payments platform for small merchants, in a deal that will enable 30,000 kirana shops to accept cashless payments. TechProcess also has a payment wallet Paynimo. In India, around 90% of the purchases are done in cash at present. However, electronic payments are expected to increase significantly in the coming years, given the recent government initiatives.

Zomato Acquires MaplePOS

Online Restaurant Guide Zomato announced the acquisition of MaplePOS, a cloud based point of sale product for restaurants developed by a group of techies from Delhi. Gurgaon based Zomato has already renamed the MaplePOS product to ‘Zomato Base’. Amount of Deal is not disclosed.

MaplePOS offers restaurants features such as menu and inventory management, and has built in payment solution to accept debit and credit card payments. It counts other Indian Players such as Posist and FusionResto. It offers software to manage menus, inventory, recipes, electronic receipts and a stealth feature which is not disclosed. This is the first product acquisition for Zomato.

Since July 2014, Zomato has acquired seven restaurant search and listing companies in various parts of the world. In February, this year, Zomato launched its Uber like Cashless product in Dubai. The company new buyout is a step forward towards taking an advantage over rival Foodpanda which is also aggressively expanding in its space even as Zomato gears up for launch of food service in India, this month.

The online food services market is valued at over $14 Billion in India and $371 Billion globally and increasing technology is becoming an integral part of servicing the palette. Zomato will work on integrating the POS product service with the consumer product over the next few months, after the integration, Zomato will start offering Zomato base to restaurant business across the world this fall.