Amazon to buy Whole Foods

Amazon.com Inc. will acquire Whole Foods Market Inc. for $13.7 Billion, a bombshell of a deal that catapults the e-commerce giant into the supermarket business with hundreds of store across the US.

Amazon agreed to pay $42 a share in cash for the organic-food chain, including debt, a roughly 27% premium to the stock price at Thursday’s close. The deal sends a shockwave across both the online and brick-and-mortar industries, uniting two brands that weren’t seen as obvious partners. For Amazon, the deal is more about getting a distribution network for groceries. It has spent years trying to break into delivering groceries, but hasn’t been as successful as in other categories.

The transaction also may help Amazon sideline Instacart Inc., a startup that has delivered grocery orders from Whole Foods stores in more than 20 states and Washington, D.C. Amazon’s biggest acquisition announced to date came in 2014, when it agreed to buy video-game service Twitch Interactive Inc. for $970 million in cash.

Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy. The takeover is slated to be completed in the second half of the year, with Whole Foods’ headquarters remaining in Austin, Texas.

Spencer acquires MeraGrocer.com

Retail Chain Spencer Retail Ltd, has acquired Gurgaon based Omnipresent Retail India Pvt. Ltd, which runs online grocery business MeraGrocer.com to enter the e-commerce space. The online grocery brand, which sold a gross merchandise value (GMV) worth Rs.5 Crore a year, caters to Gurgaon and Delhi. The acquisition will provide Spencer an omnichannel space.

Spencer would provide its entire basket of retail products through its online platform, starting with grocery and food and later extending it to non-food items. At present, Spencer Retail has presence in 35 cities with 122 stores across India. There are three more stores in the pipeline which will be added by March 2016. Spencer has plans to utilize the existing logistics and infrastructure, though it also plans to tie up with delivery companies for resources.

Meragrocer.com has been in operations from the end of 2014, and its customers can order through a mobile-app, IVR and pay either through an e-wallet or cash-on-delivery. Spencer expects to complete the acquisition and integration process in the next one or two month. At present there are close to 20 employees, all of whom will be absorbed in Spencer.

Jugnoo acquires Bistro and Yelo

India’s Jugnoo, a ten month old start up that has apps for both auto rickshaw rides and food delivery had acquired Bistro, a restaurant discovery app and Yelo, a services marketplace. The deal size of both the start-ups combined is said to be worth $1 Million in cash and stock.

With this acquisition, Jugnoo wants to strengthen its position in the hyper local service. Bistro, an eighteen month old startup, provides a DIY Platform for broadcasting offers and managing loyalty for restaurants. The app helps build, execute, and monitor customer engagement and brand loyalty campaigns. Yelo, a one year old startup offers a networking app for freelancers and part timers.

Jugnoo runs three apps- Jugnoo Autos, Jugnoo Meals, and Jugnoo Fatafat. The Jugnoo Autos app, started in November 2014, is like Uber for auto rickshaw rides. The other service is Jugnoo Meals, launched in February, which offers home delivery of freshly home cooked food with a rotational menu. The meals are cooked by Jugnoo in house chefs and are delivered within 30 minutes of placing the order.

Jugnoo launched Jugnoo Fatafat in April, a hyper local commerce marketplace for home delivery of fresh groceries. Earlier, Jugnoo acquired cab aggregator Bookmycab to enter the taxi aggregator space in bigger cities like Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Pune. After the acquisition, Jugnoo managed to cross 10,000 daily transactions. The startup secured $5 Million in seed funding from Snow Leopard and Paytm three months ago. It competes with Ola and Uber.

BigBasket acquires Delyver

Founded in December 2011, BigBasket is an online grocery store. BigBasket has acquired logistics startup Delyver in a cash and stock transaction to bolster its capacity to deliver fast and compete with agile players in the segment like Grofers, PepperTap and LocalBanya. BigBasket will employ Delyver orders in 90 minutes.

BigBasket is likely to leverage Delyver expertise in hyper local delivery to roll out one hour delivery services in the six cities in which it is present i.e. Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Pune, and Mumbai. It was a cash and stock deal with 50% of the amount being paid in cash. Delyver will continue to operate as a separate business while Big Basket will deploy its fleet of two-wheelers to facilitate timely delivery.

Delyver will scale to the 50 cities as and when Big Basket enters a new market. Delyver specializes in delivering orders within one hour from stores across categories such as food, vegetables and flowers. It will continue with its existing categories instead of restricting itself to just groceries. The hyper local avenue is witnessing a surge of innovations as more and more players are entering the field.

With technology snowballing or advancing to higher levels, the scope for these players is rendered wide open; the potential of this segment is estimated to be so high that even the big fish in the market have registered themselves to compete. While Amazon India has already made an entry into the Indian market with its Kirana Now, Ola has started its pilot project to deliver groceries.

Askme acquires BestAtLowest.com

Askme.com, the online search, listings and deals portal of Getit Infomedia Pvt. Ltd, has acquired Online groceries start up BestAtLowest.com. With this acquisition, the e-commerce portal and its team of 25 people became a part of Askme. This will work on integrating BestAtLowest.com into askmegroceries.com which will be launched later this year.

Accelity BestAtLowest.com Online services Pvt. Ltd, which runs bestatlowest.com is a marketplace working in the hub and spoke model. It has tied up with retailers and supermarket stores to acquire food and groceries to supply to its hub, which are the delivered across locations. It offers a same day delivery service within 4-6 hours of consumers placing an order in Delhi and the National Capital Region.

This is an acqui-hire, where one acquire a company and get its talent on board to extend or build a new category. In March, Godrej Nature Basket had acquired Ekstop.com, an online groceries portal, and integrated its platform to augment its online delivery and web presence. The brand also offers same day delivery in the five cities it operates.

Online groceries which is not even a per cent of sales of the consumer packaged goods sector, is becoming a fast growing segment. The internet will influence one-third of the total sales in the consumer packaged goods sector in the next five years. Brick and mortar retail in India is expected to grow three times to $180 Billion in 2020 from $60 Billion in 2015.