Livspace acquires Dwll.in

Helion Backed home design and décor start up Livspace has announced the acquisition of Bengaluru based Dwll.in to lead the space. Founded in 2013, Dwll.in is an Indian curated online network of interior designers. This is Livspace second acquisition in less than a month. Towards the end of the March, the company had bought DezignUp, an online design community and marketplace.

As part of the deal, the co-founders of Dwll.in and the core team will join the Livspace family. With this acquisition, Livspace will start building go-to-market strategy for the western region, in addition to expanding across other metros and Tier 1 Cities. Livspace is currently projecting a revenue run rate of more than a $10 Million in months to come.

Livspace is an online shopping destination for home décor and furnishings. Also, it offers facility to hire designers on its platform. Further, the users can customize the products based on their requirements. It delivers in Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Online home décor market in India will touch $20 Billion by 2015.

Out of this $20 Billion market 40% - 50% is furniture and rest are pure home décor items such as Cutlery, kitchen items, fancy lamps etc. Other players in the online furniture space include Urban Ladder, Fab Furnish, HomeLane, CustomerFurnish, Pepperfry etc. Online market place like Snapdeal, Jabong, Homeshop18 etc. also have home décor and furnishing as one of their verticals. 

PVR to acquire DLF DT Cinemas

Realty major DLF plans to sell ‘DT cinemas’ and is in talks with potential buyers including PVR Ltd, as part of its strategy to exit non-core businesses and cut huge debt of over Rs. 20,000 crore. This would be PVRs second attempt to acquire DT Cinemas after 2009, when it entered into definitive agreement with the DLF group.

India currently has 1,700 multiplex screens with PVR leading the market with 454 screens while the second ranked Inox owns 361 screens. DT Cinemas currently operates 29 screens in National capital Region of Delhi and Chandigarh. It will ramp up its operations to 39 screens by 2016. It is one of the significant players in the Delhi and the NCR with 18 screens in Delhi, eight in Gurgaon and another three in Chandigarh.

In December, Carnival acquired Anil Ambani Big Cinemas for an enterprise valuation of a little over Rs 710 crore. Inox Leisure, acquired Delhi based Satyam Cineplexes for nearly Rs 240 crore. Inox expanded its presence to 50 cities, with 91 Multiplexes and 358 screens. Housing development and Infrastructure sold its Multiplex business Broadway Cinemas to Carnival Cinemas, and Mexican Multiplex chain Cinepolis bought Fun Cinemas.

Though DLF Assets are located at prime places and command premium, the deal value is on the higher side in comparison to other deal that included in the recent past, indicating that the space getting more competitive. 

Apple Acquires Coherent Navigation

For many of the largest Silicon Valley Technology companies, location software undergirds numerous applications and features in their products. For Apple, it has been a game of catch up. Recently, Apple confirmed that it had purchased Coherent Navigation, a Bay Area global positioning company, further bolstering Apple location technology and services.

Apple buys smaller technologies companies time to time and generally do not discuss plans. Founded in 2008, Coherent Navigation was a small firm that focused on creating navigation services based on partnerships with companies like Boeing and Iridium, the satellite network operator. It worked on high precision navigation systems, technology that is far stronger than many consumer grade global positioning systems, which are typically accurate to within three to five meters.

It has also worked on autonomous navigation and robotics projects, as well as projects for the defense department. The purchase of Placebase, a small mapping service, in 2009 represented Apple transition to building its own mapping technology. Over the following years, Apple bought a string of companies in much the same vein, including Locationary and Hopstop.

Many of these acquisitions were part of a broader strategy to move away from reliance on Google Maps, Google widely used navigation service. In 2012, Apple released its own mapping service using in house technology as well as some licensed from TomTom, a Dutch digital mapping company.  This replaced Apple old mapping application, which was based on Google Maps.

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. 

Verizon to buy AOL

Verizon Communications is an American broadband and telecommunications company. It was founded as Bell Atlantic and it is the largest US Wireless communication service provider. AOL is an American multinational mass media corporation which develops, grows and invests in brands and websites. The company business spans digital distribution of content, products, and services, which it offers to consumers, publishers, and advertisers.

Recently, Verizon Communication said, it would buy AOL Inc. in a deal valued at about $4.4 Billion to gain access to AOL digital advertising service and content. The deal will see king of mobile phones acquire the one time king of media. Verizon is the largest phone operator in the country, and has growing lines of business offering high speed Internet, as well as business and streaming video services.

But in acquiring AOL, Verizon is buying much more than websites that host streaming content. Along with its video and online advertising technology, AOL owns the Huffington Post, a sprawling collection of international new websites with growing traffic. It also manages a dwindling but profitable dial up Internet business, providing online access for those who live in areas too remote to have broadband or who never canceled their subscriptions.

Verizon with more than 1.5 Billion connected devices has a vast network through which to distribute mobile content. It has been quietly building up its entertainment offerings, but until now has not made any significant acquisitions to bolster its offerings. 

Myntra Buys app developer Native5

Online fashion e-tailer Myntra has acquired Bengaluru based mobile application development platform Native5, a move that goes with its strategy to shift entirely to the mobile platform. Native5 has developed a cloud platform to create and distribute mobile apps across smart phones, tablets and desktops.

Flipkart and Myntra had recently closed down their websites, with the aim of focusing more resources on their mobile apps. There is also speculation that they may close down their desktop websites in the future and go mobile app only, considering they are getting a lot of traction on their apps.

Myntra recently hosted an open Mobile Hack Day’ and had about 160 Internal and External participants from various companies developing hacks around their mobile app. The winning hacks included chat based commerce, real time chat application to buy with friends, an augmented reality shooting game and an app that links all other apps. This shows that Myntra is serious about its ‘app only’ strategy and is looking at all possible angles to provide a better and more complete end to end experience.

Native5 was incubated at Microsoft Accelerator in 2013 and it was a part of the Nasscom 10,000 startup programme the same year. The venture was one of the finalists of Qualcomm QPrize in 2012. Previously, in 2012, Myntra acquired Exclusively, which had a private label brand, and in 2013, it acquired Fitiquette that developed an in-store dressing room experience akin to a virtual fitting room for shoppers to try on clothes online.

Carzonrent Buys Ridingo

Private Equity firm WestBridge Capital backed Carzonrent India Pvt. Ltd, which runs radio cab services besides offering self-drive car rental and fleet management services, has acquired Bangalore based 42 Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which runs a ride sharing app Ridingo for an undisclosed amount.

With the acquisition, Carzonrent expects ride share business to account for 75 per cent of its business in five years. It will continue to see the Ridingo brand name. New Delhi based Carzonrent, which started as a corporate leasing and Cab rental service provider in 2000 also owns Easy Cabs service and MYLES, a self-drive venture. Its car lease division has a fleet of about 2,000 cars and about 135 corporate clients. It is now focusing on the consumer side of business.

The company is backed by WestBridge Capital, BTS Advisors and SIDBI Venture, had together invested about Rs 80 crore for about 32 percent stake in 2012. Ridingo connects car owners to people looking for a ride within the city. At present, it claims over 8,500 registered users in Bangalore and enables over 400 trips per day.

In October last year, Japan Sumitomo Mitsui Auto service Co Ltd and Sumitomo Corporation through their joint venture firm SMAS auto Leasing India Pvt. Ltd, agreed to acquire the auto leasing business of Carzonrent for an undisclosed amount. At a global level, BlaBlaCar competes with Uber, which operates a carpooling service called UberPool in some markets. It is not available in India yet.

Future Retail to merge with Bharti Retail

Kishore Biyani Future Retail Ltd and Bharti Retail Ltd have decided to combine their retail operations to create Rs 15000 crore companies in a move that accelerates the consolidation of India’s organized retail trade. Bharti Retail will get a 10% stake in the combined entity. Future Retail is valued at Rs 5000 crore currently.

The combined company will be demerged into two companies one which will be the front end will retain the name Future Retail and will have 570 stores and a presence in multiple retail formats across 243 cities. The second will be back end, investments and Infrastructure Company and will be listed separately as Future Enterprises Ltd.

Bharti Retail has 203 Easy Day stores currently which generates close to Rs 2000 crore in revenues whereas Future Retail has 300 stores and revenues to close to Rs 13000 crore. Bharti Easy Day retail brand will be retained. Future retail has about Rs 1200 crore debt and Future infrastructure has close to Rs 3500 crore of debt in the books.

The company is looking to have 4000 supermarket or small format stores in India by 2021. Currently it has close to 450 small stores. Shareholders of both Bharti Retail and Future Retail would hold shares in the two new companies. Future retail operates around 350 stores in different parts of the country spread over 11 million feet of retail space. Bharti retail currently operates a network of over stores in multiple formats across 114 cities.

Filipino BPO, Blackstone to acquire Serco India

Private equity giant Blackstone and Filipino BPO Company SPi Global remain in race for buying London listed Serco’s Indian BPO Unit.  The deal is said to be in the range of $400 Million. Formerly known as Intelenet, it had been sold by Blackstone to Serco for $634 Million in 2011. Out of both companies, only one company will win the bid to acquire Serco BPO Unit.

Intelenet was set up in 2000 as a 50-50 venture between HDFC and TCS. In 2004, HDFC acquired TCS stake for 160 crore to sell it to Barclays later. In 2007, Blackstone bought an 80 percent stake in Intelenet for about $260 Million. When it sold Intelenet in 2011, Blackstone had a 66 percent stake and rest was divided among Barclays, HDFC and the management team. Blackstone had managed to get more than a 60 percent return on its four year investment.

Serco had announced the future strategy of the company would be to focus on being a Business to government service provider across five core areas and four key regions. SPi Global, a leading diversified BPO service provider in Philippines operates on offshore based model primarily serving US and Europe Customers with more than 20,000 employees across 17 delivery locations in six countries, including India, US, China, Vietnam, and Nicaragua.

In April 2012, Serco Group had bought all its BPO assets together to create Serco Global Services. Serco BPO operation is largest in India after Genpact and TCS. 

Flipkart acquires Appiterate

E-commerce major Flipkart has been very clear about its mobile only strategy and in order to strengthen its presence in the area of mobile technology, it has acquired a New-Delhi based mobile engagement and marketing automation company Appiterate. This is Flipkart third acquisition of this year.

Appiterate helps E-commerce companies target customers better through push notifications and in-app messages. The funding team has a strong experience in the mobile app space and has in the past built mobile apps for companies such as Microsoft, Zomato, Groupon, Sears etc. In a short span Appiterate has carved out a niche in the industry as being one of the most disruptive companies in its space.

Flipkart is planning to go mobile-only within a year. Following the announcement that Myntra will shut down its website on May 1, Flipkart had said the E-commerce firm will too shift to an app only model within a year as traffic from mobile had grown nearly 10 times in just 12 months. Flipkart has been persistently looking to improve and expand its mobile app capabilities and plans to invest in and acquire other companies in this domain.

After this acquisition, Appiterate mobile marketing automation platform will be integrated into Flipkart mobile app to help in precise targeting of users based on their activity on the app and website. Appiterate has raised money from institutional investors like SAIF partners and angel investors.

Capgemini to acquire IGate

Capgemini is a French Multinational Management consulting corporation headquartered in Paris, France. It provides IT services and is one of the world largest consulting, outsourcing, and professional services companies with almost 145,000 employees in over 40 countries.

Recently, Capgemini announced that it will acquire IGate in a transaction that will amount to $4.04 Billion that will make North America into its biggest market and hand IGate Founder a $1 Billion windfall. IGate, which has strength in the financial sector, has grown quickly since its 1996 stock market listing. IGate does about 80 percent business in North America and would represent 30 percent of the combined group estimated 2015 revenue of $13.58 Billion.

The combination of IGate and Capgemini provides cross selling revenue synergies of $100-150 Million and annual efficiency gains estimated at $75-100 Million. Capgemini had in 2006 acquired Kanbay International, which had significant operations in India. This helped increase Capgemini presence in India.

With the acquisition, Capgemini would add new clients such as General Electric Co and Royal Bank of Canada. IGate employs 33,000 people globally, with 75 percent of them in India. The combined company would have more than 100,000 employees there, or 48 percent of its workforce. The new company also stands to offer more platforms based and intellectual property based solutions to help clients respond to and stay at the forefront of their market.

Practo Acquires Fitho

Practo Technologies Pvt. Ltd., an online doctor booking portal had acquired Delhi-based health and fitness solutions firm Fitho Wellness Services Pvt. Ltd, which runs the Fitho Mobile app. Bengaluru based Practo is looking to launch services in preventive healthcare by the end of this year. This acquisition will provide it access to Fitho proprietary algorithm and recommendation engine, which will help expand Practo offerings.

Practo will launch a new preventive healthcare product that will leverage some of the technology from Fitho, whose service will phase out over the next six months. Practo raised $30 Million in a second round funding in February to fund its expansion in 35 cities in India and overseas.

Fitho was founded in 2010. The technology solutions help users manage weight and lifestyle diseases. The products provide personalized advice to millions of consumers on nutrition and physical activity. As the part of deal, Fitho current offerings will be phased out over the next six months and the founders will take on roles in preventive health and new segments.

Practo ray is a subscription based web software tool for doctors who provide automated appointment scheduling, storage of healthcare records including x-ray, files, prescriptions and billing. The company has 500,000 users of the mobile app which is 60% of the total user base. The overall Indian healthcare market today is estimated to be around $65 Billion. Healthcare delivery which includes hospitals, nursing homes and diagnostic centers, and pharmaceuticals, constitutes 65% of the overall market. 

Zomato acquires US based NexTable

After acquiring data firm MaplePOS few days back, now India based restaurant listing site Zomato has acquired US based restaurant reservations and table management platform NexTable. Service will soon be renamed as ‘Zomato Book’. Zomato will be taking NexTable technology in three international markets i.e. India, UAE, and Australia. This is the company second acquisition in US after Urbanspoon for $52 Million.

NexTable enables customers to make restaurant reservations online in real time and includes table management and marketing tools for restaurants. Zomato has been focusing on creating a seamless in app-experience for customers, and has been working on moving beyond just restaurant search and discovery, into reservations, online ordering, and in-app cash payments.

Zomato has been aggressively growing its product offering for restaurant business. Adding NexTable and MaplePOS into the fold now enables Zomato to offer POS Solutions, table management and reservation system services to restaurant businesses. It already allows restaurants businesses to update their menus, deals and discounts on a real time basis on Zomato.

The NexTable deals make for a total of nine acquisitions in the past nine months for Zomato. The largest of these was the acquisition of Urbanspoon. Zomato has also acquired dominant local restaurant search players in New Zealand, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Turkey, and Italy.

MakeMyTrip Acquires Mygola

The country’s top online travel agency MakeMyTrip Ltd has acquired assets of Mygola.com for an undisclosed amount and the entire Mygola team has joined MakeMyTrip as part of the deal. The acquisition is done through the NASDAQ listed company innovation fund, which was formed to invest in startup or early stage companies in travel technology space.

Mygola, founded by IIT Batch mates Bapna and Prateek Sharma in 2009, claims it can help travellers create custom trips in 15 minutes. Its app, which is present in 16 cities across the world, has up to 5,000 installs on the Google Play store on Android. Mygola mobile app uses technology to curate content, videos, open/close hours, tips from travellers, panoramic views all on a massive scale and specific to individual user taste. The acquisition could potentially give MakeMyTrip a greater foothold in the mobile space.

Since users book everything from attractions to restaurants and cabs from within the app, the company makes money through a commission every time a transaction happens. For restaurant booking it charges $1 per diner and between 5 and 10 percent from cabs etc. It also charges 5 percent from end users as convenience fee. In the original model, Mygola used to generate revenues from users asking questions besides earning a commission for bookings.

The acquisition comes at a time when the Indian travel sector is heating up, having received $71 Million in funding so far in 2015, mostly in early stage and seed funding, as opposed to $55 Million in all of 2014. Helion Venture partners, who led the $1.5 Million round in 2013 for Mygola in October, were also an investor in MakeMyTrip. Prior to that, Mygola had raised $1 Million from the US based accelerator 500 startups, Blumberg capital.

Toppr.com acquires EasyPrep

Online test preparation platform Toppr.com has acquired Jodhpur based EasyPrep an online platform to help students prepare for entrance exams, for an undisclosed amount. Entrance Exam preparation market for K-12 Students is valued at $8 Billion and growing 20 percent every year.

EasyPrep is a customized exam creation platform for schools, coaching institutes and teachers and an exam preparation platform for students. EasyPrep provides an online/offline platform for schools, coaching institutes and teachers to create exam papers for their classroom teaching, for student’s assessment and for helping students prepare for competitive examinations.

Toppr.com provides students with insights into their strong and weak areas through which they can effectively decide where to invest their time in practicing for the entrance examination. It also predicts what rank they will have on the basis of their current performance and how they can improve their rank. The analysis gives the student a real picture and motivation to improve and reach in IIT.

In a short span, Toppr.com has a grown team of over 100 members and serving over 1, 50,000+ students across India. Earlier this month, Singapore based XSEED Education Pte acquired online learning management business of Pleolabs, an Indian Education technology startup. 

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.

LinkedIn bought Lynda.com

Lynda.com is a privately held online education company offering thousands of video courses in software, creative, and business skills. It was founded in 1995. The company produces video tutorials taught by industry experts. Members have unlimited access to watch the videos, which are primarily educational. It has more than 500 employees worldwide, and offers instruction in German, French, and Spanish through its branded division, video2brain.

The career social network LinkedIn bought Lynda.com in a cash stock deal valued at $1.5 Million. Mission of both the companies is equally aligned. When integrated with the hundreds of Millions of members and millions of jobs on LinkedIn, Lynda.com can change the way in which people connect to opportunity. The acquisition combines 52 percent cash payout and 48 percent stock.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest online professional network, and with more than four million members, 267k video tutorials, and 6300 courses. LinkedIn has reported revenue growth of nearly 50 percent in each of the last three quarters, helped by rapid expansion in international markets such as China. This is the largest deal for LinkedIn in 12 years. LinkedIn generated $2.2 Billion in sales last year. Lynda.com made more than $150 Million in revenue last year and has turned a profit since 1997. 

Snapdeal acquires FreeCharge

India’s largest online marketplace, Snapdeal has acquired FreeCharge, India’s fastest growing mobile transaction platform. This is one of the biggest acquisitions in the history of Internet industry in India and sets up Snapdeal to build the most impactful digital commerce ecosystem in India.

With this acquisition, Snapdeal becomes the largest mobile commerce company in India offering the widest range of products and services, including financial services, mobile recharge and utility payments with an exponentially growing user base of over 40 Million. FreeCharge is India’s leading mobile ecommerce platform where users can pay their mobile DTH and utility payments across most major operators.

Every day 75 Million mobile recharges are done in India by a section of India’s 800 Million mobile phone subscribers. FreeCharge offers a convenient and efficient solution applicable to hundreds of millions of consumers for paying utility bills, and especially doing mobile recharges, which often ends up being the first e-commerce transaction that a consumer does online given the ticket size and instant gratification.

FreeCharge will continue to function as an independent platform and all aspects of FreeCharge Shopping experience will remain intact. The companies will collaborate to offer a seamless shopping experience to customers across both the platforms offering an even wider range of products and services. Over the past six months, Snapdeal has acquired Exclusively.in, Doozton, and Wishpicker. Snapdeal also picked up a majority stake in digital financial services platform RupeePower.com.

Molson Coors acquires Mount Shivalik Breweries

Molson Coors Brewing Company is a North American Brewing Company, formed in 2005 by the merger of Molson of Canada, and Coors of United States. It is world’s seventh largest brewer by volume. The company is headquartered in Denver, Colorado and in Montreal, Quebec. Recently, the company announced the acquisition of Mohali based Mount Shivalik Breweries for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition gives it sweeping control of two breweries, apart from adding strong beer brand Thunderbolt to its portfolio. Molson Coors has acquired entire brand portfolio, and will assume direct control over brewing operations in Haryana and Punjab, giving it an additional capacity of 600,000 hectoliters. Molson Coors sells beer brands such as Iceberg 9000 King Cobra and Royal Brew in India.

Molson Coors has spent close to Rs 700 Crore since its entry into India in June 2011, in acquiring existing domestic beer brands such as Thunderbolt and launching brands such as Carling from its international portfolio. Since India is largely a strong beer market, Thunderbolt has a strong recall in some markets in North. Demand for such brands is strong in outskirts of urban areas and tier-II markets.

The latest acquisition will give a boost to the American Brewer distribution in Punjab, Haryana, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh, where Mount Shivalik has built a steady distribution network since its establishment in 1972. Molson Coors entered India by purchasing a controlling stake of Cobra India, creating the joint venture Molson Coors Cobra India. Molson Coors Cobra currently maintains one brewery in Bihar.  

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.