Cognizant acquires Hedera Consulting

IT firm Cognizant has acquired privately held Hedera Consulting, a move that will strengthen the former consulting and digital transformation capabilities for clients in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Founded in 2009, Hedera specializes in business advisory and data analytics services across sectors, helping clients in areas like growth strategy, innovation, marketing, sales and customer service. In 2015, Hedera started an additional business line focusing on analytics and data excellence. With offices in Belgium and the Netherlands, the company has served clients across countries including Italy, Switzerland, the Nordics and UK and the Middle East.

By joining forces with Cognizant, Hedera are even better positioned to help clients define their strategy; transform their businesses and gain insight and competitive advantage in their fast-changing, highly competitive marketplaces. Our combined industry and local knowledge and experience, as well as our strong joint team, will better enable our customers in the Belgian and Dutch markets to extract meaning from their data and use it to effectively shape their products, services and experiences.

In the Belgian and Dutch markets, companies are re-designing their business and IT operating models for the digital era. Hedera Consulting expands our ability to help these European clients create agile and digitally transformed enterprises that can act and react to the oceans of data for deeper customer insight, new product development, and to innovate and exploit new business opportunities.

Cognizant acquires Idea Couture

Cognizant had acquired Idea Couture, a privately held firm that offers a broad range of digital innovation, strategy, design and technology services. Based in Toronto, and with offices in Europe, US and Latin America, the firm has more than 170 social scientists, strategists, anthropologists, user experience experts, designers and connected product developers who serve leading companies across multiple industries including Samsung, PepsiCo, Cox, Citi Ventures, Kroger, ConAgra Foods and others.

New generation of digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, mobility, business analytics, cloud services and the Internet of Things are disrupting every industry. Enterprises are looking to understand and apply these next generation technologies to front office customer experience, middle office business process and back office IT Systems, reshaping how they interact with customers, employees, partners and others in the digital economy.

Idea Couture will become a part of Cognizant digital works, specializes in designing and prototyping products, services and business models that take advantage of the latest technologies. To help clients succeed in this new economy, Cognizant digital works brings together human insight, strategy, design, technology and industry expertise to create innovative solutions at enterprise scale.

Wipro to acquire Designit

In line with its strategy to equip itself tapping the opportunities in the digital space, Wipro, India’s third largest IT services company will acquire Designit, a Denmark based global strategic design firm for a consideration of around Euro 85 Million. The acquisition is expected to strengthen the capability of Wipro Digital, the digital business unit of the company which it set up in March this year.

Founded in 1991, Designit is considered one of the world’s largest privately held firms with an employee base of around 300 and design studios across nine cities globally. The company which reported revenues of Euro 27 Million provides strategic design, user experience and interaction design services to many global brands in segments such as Healthcare, banking, automotive and retail. Some of its global clientele includes companies such as Cisco, Harman, Brussels Airlines, Vodafone, Jabra, Danske Bank and Telefonica.

With the change in the technology buying behavior by global enterprises, the vendors who were offering traditional IT outsourcing services are seen aggressively looking at newer areas like social, mobility, big data and analytics and cloud wherein they are trying to position themselves as end-to-end digital partners. Strengthening the design capability holds key in these areas as it impacts the consumer experiences in a big way.

Wipro has been one of the most acquisitive IT services companies in India. The company has so far acquired around nine companies through the largest one so has been Infocrossing which it bought in August 2007 for about $600 Million. 

PayPal bought Money Transfer service Xoom

PayPal has made a few significant acquisitions since 2013, including purchasing Paydiant and Braintree. Now, PayPal said it would buy digital money transfer provider Xoom Corp. for $890 Million as it muscles into a growing international remittance market and expand in countries like Mexico, India and China ahead of a spinoff from eBay Inc.

Xoom, which has 1.3 Million customers and a presence in 37 countries, allow users to transfer money via desktop, mobile phones and tablets. The acquisition would allow Xoom to expand into new markets with less execution risk. Xoom will operate as a separate service within PayPal after the completion of the deal.

PayPal faces increasing competition from rivals like Stripe and Square, which is popular with smaller businesses and Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay. Online commerce foe Amazon Inc. is also beginning to explore in store payments. The company is slated to separate from eBay this month and list as an Independent company.

PayPal has been pushing hard into mobile, where customers are more frequently making everyday purchases. The company has touted its peer-to-peer money transferring division Venmo, used primarily by smartphone touting millennial, and earlier this year bought app developer Paydiant.

Eclerx buys CLX Europe

Eclerx is an Indian knowledge process outsourcing company based in Mumbai. Eclerx is a public limited company whose shares are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange of India. In April 2012, Eclerx acquired Agilyst Inc. to grow its footprint in the U.S. cable and telecom industry.

Recently, KPO Company said it agreed to buy Italian Digital services firm CLX Europe for not more than 25 Million euros, as it looks to increase its retail business and expand into Europe. CLX Europe helps create, manage and deliver media content to support marketing, communication, and branding for retail companies. It has more than 75 clients including leading UK and European retailers, publishers and luxury goods companies. It employs about 300 people.

CLX will operate as a subsidiary of Eclerx services and its current management team will continue to manage day to day operations. The transaction will be funded through Eclerx internal accruals. Eclerx offers data analysis and data process solutions to the retail, manufacturing, and financial services industries. This is the only significant listed company in the country in the KPO space. The firm has five delivery centers in Mumbai, Pune, and Chandigarh.

Star India acquires Screen

Star India is an Indian Media and entertainment company, owned by 21^st Century Fox. It is headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Star India portfolio includes 48 channels in eight languages. Recently, Star India entered into an agreement with Indian Express Group to acquire film magazine ‘Screen’. Founded in 1951, Screen also owns a popular film awards franchise by the same name.

As part of the transaction, Star will get exclusive ownership of the Screen brand franchise, including all archival material and transfer of key employees. The screen acquisition will yield huge benefits for Star India and Hotstar app, the digital platform. Star has built one of the largest media and entertainment organizations in the country, reaching over 700 million viewers with nearly 40 channels in seven languages.

Screen, with a circulation of nearly 15,000 copies per week, will publish its last print edition this week as Star India takes the entertainment weekly online to be a part of its recently launched digital initiative Hotstar. Hotstar launched on 1 February, is a mobile application that offers more than 35,000 hours of content in seven languages, promising viewers a big library of movies, television shows and even live sports (cricket, football, tennis, and kabaddi).

The deal is estimated to be in the range of Rs 30 crore to Rs 40 crore. The acquisitions means Star now owns the popular screen awards. Last month, Star India acquired Telugu television channel Maa TV in its largest acquisition in India, in a deal estimated to be in excess of Rs 2000 Crore. Hotstar has 35-40 advertisers across various categories including Coca Cola, Nissan, Nestle, and Airtel, as well as e-commerce companies like Snapdeal and Flipkart.

Snapdeal in talks to buy Komli

A major acquisition in the mobile advertising space seems only a matter of time as e-commerce players flex their financial muscle to bring in the next piece of their jigsaw puzzle. Sources indicate that the likes of Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, and Shopclues, are all in the market for acquisition. The target seems to be broadly divided in two categories – mobile tech and mobile banking.

Online retailer Snapdeal is in advanced talks to acquire Komli Media in a deal that values the ad technology company at about $300 Million, the same as when it raised funds from investors. The deal will give Snapdeal engineering capabilities in Bengaluru as it battles Flipkart, as well as it notch up advertising revenues by selling space on the e-commerce site. Snapdeal had an estimated 79.8 monthly visitors in February and Flipkart had 110.5 Million.

Flipkart recently made clear its plans to sell advertising on its platform. The ecommerce firm also acquired ad technology company AdIQuity. Komli was founded by Amar Goel in 2006 and has raised $97 Million in five rounds of funding from investors including Nexus Ventures Partners and Peepul Capital. It employs nearly 300 people across India and started as a digital advertising network – buying and selling advertising inventory online in Asia Pacific.

Goel also set up Pubmatic, focused on technology for online advertising in the US in 2008. InMobi, another ad network based in Bengaluru, was founded a year later and went on to raise $200 Million from Japan Softbank. Driven by increased spending by ecommerce companies, India’s online advertising market is set to grow by 30% this financial year to reach a total size of Rs 3,575 crore.