Pine Labs in talks to buy Qwikcilver

New Delhi based online retail payments platform Pine Labs is in talks to acquire Bengaluru digital gift card firm Qwikcilver Solutions, as the former looks to creating a strong footing in the gifting space.

Pine Labs is looking to acquire Qwikcilver for over $100 Mn in a mix of cash and stock deal. Once the acquisition deal materializes, the existing investors in the company are expected to cash out, while the founders of the company may stay on with the team. Launched in 2008, Qwikcilver helps retail and corporate customers to enhance their sales, brand and loyalty through card-based interventions such as Gift Cards, Loyalty Cards, Discount Cards, Frequency Cards and Credit Cards. It also provides a cloud-drive software-as-a-service for various brands.

The company claimed to have handled gift-card transactions worth INR 3K Cr ($422 Mn) with 160 Mn transactions in 2016. In the same year, Qwikcilver had raised undisclosed funding led by Sistema Asia Fund, the proprietary fund of Russian conglomerate Sistema. Prior to that, Amazon had invested $10 Mn in Qwikcilver Solutions. Overall, the company is believed to have raised $20 Mn. It also counts Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners among its investors.

The acquisition of Qwikcilver may give Pine Labs an edge in offering gift cards to small-and medium-sized stores with card payment facilities. The Indian gift card market is expected to reach $80 Bn – $85 Bn by 2024. Of which, e-gift cards are expected to account for a lion’s share with $70 Bn. Pine Labs was launched in 1998. The Sequoia Capital-backed fintech company counts many large corporates among its clients. It provides an integrated payment gateway services to its partners. It claimed to be processing about 450 Mn transactions worth over $15 Bn annually, as of March 2018.

Oyo in talks to acquire FreshMenu

Gurugram based hospitality chain OYO Hotels and Homes is in talks to acquire Bengaluru based cloud Kitchen startup FreshMenu in a deal worth $50 Mn - $60 Mn. FreshMenu shareholder Zodius Capital may be paid in cash while, the founders and investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and GrowthStory will be allocated Oyo shares, if the deal is finalized.

If the deal goes through successfully, Oyo will make its foray into online food delivery business. The move is said to enhance its hospitality business portfolio and food is an essential element to its operations. Bengaluru-based FreshMenu had been looking to raise capital for the last few months. The deal is being considered as a win-win proposition for both the companies.

Oyo is building a food team, which will help FreshMenu expand to more cities under the Oyo brand name. The idea could be more about adding the element of food to further build the hospitality business rather than getting into the food delivery entirely.

FreshMenu clocks about 15,000-20,000 orders daily and if Oyo acquires the startup kitchen, it will leverage highly on the company's infrastructure of 170,000 rooms across India. Oyo's advanced rounds of these discussions with FreshMenu follow after it recently rose close to $1 billion from Japan's SoftBank with participation from ride-hailing companies Grab and Didi Chuxing taking up its valuation to $5 billion.

Apple buys Pullstring

Apple agreed to buy Pullstring, a startup that enables the design and publishing of voice apps, as the tech giant seeks to compete more effectively with Amazon and Google in voice empowered apps. A group of former Pixar executives founded Pullstring in 2011 to make interactive voice apps for toys before expanding into Internet of Things (IoT) products.

Pullstring makes software tools for voice apps, and artificial intelligence to power those experiences and toys such as Mattel’s talking Barbie and Thomas the Tank Engine toys. The company was criticized in 2015 for creating “child surveillance devices,” but said its products had security features to protect privacy

Pullstring technology may help Apple to strengthen ties with app creators and gain broader developer support for Siri, which is critical for offering voice-enabled services that will encourage consumers to use its virtual assistant. Apple pioneered voice-enabled technology with the introduction of its Siri virtual assistant more than seven years ago, but the company has fallen behind Amazon and Google in voice-powered platforms like smart speakers that work as hubs for connected homes.

Amazon has a 70% share of the U.S. smart-speaker market with its Echo devices. Google Home trails with 24% of the installed base while Apple's HomePod is a distant third with only 6% of the market. Apple risks losing out on the growing market for IoT devices and services without a stronger presence in smart speakers.

Byju acquired Osmo

Tencent backed online learning platform Byju is looking to leverage Osmo, the Silicon Valley startup it recently acquired for $120 Million, to build capabilities in technologies such as computer vision and artificial intelligence.

Osmo, founded by former Googlers specializes in using computer vision for creating blended learning games for kids. While the startup will be able to leverage Byju’s content, the Bengaluru-based firm will get access to Osmo’s tech smarts.  Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field in which computers are trained to extract, analyze and understand digital images or videos, with the intent of replicating what humans can do.

Byju’s DNA is predominantly offline (and content), and even today a bulk of their distribution remains offline. Osmo will help the company develop a tech lens in the product offering. Osmo’s technology can today detect shapes, numbers, letters and even images of characters and objects in relatively real-time, but going forward it says this capability will grow. Imagine a biology classroom where students get step-by-step instructions on how to dissect a frog from software that is watching their every move.

The startup will continue refining its machine vision tools and will add more members to its team to speed up the development of advanced capabilities. Today, Osmo’s software is only trained to recognize pre-programmed images, but in the future, it could make sense of something it is seeing for the first time and throw up relevant content for the student.

Delhivery acquires Aramex

Gurugram based logistics provider for ecommerce companies, Delhivery, has acquired the India Business of Dubai based logistics firm Aramex for an undisclosed amount. Aramex provides logistics for major ecommerce companies such as Amazon India. In 2016, the company had invested in online hyperlocal Delhivery service for restaurants Grab.in, and Jaipur intra-city B2B logistics service provider, Logisure.

Delhivery will now take over Aramex India’s pick-up and delivery shipment operations. However, Aramex will continue to focus on its global competencies of express and freight and will continue the international business in the country. Delhivery was founded in 2011. As of December 2018, the company claimed to be catering its logistics service in more than 600 cities with 12 fulfillment centres for B2C and B2B services.

The startup, which counts Carlyle and Tiger Global as investors, works with ecommerce companies such as Flipkart and Paytm. Speculation was rife earlier that Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund is reportedly looking to acquire 37.87% stake in Delhivery, and has reportedly sought approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

Logistics is the brain behind the supply chain industry. Over the years, startups in this sector have come up with innovative new technologies with logistics-related software solutions, last-mile delivery, robotics, automation solutions. Indian logistics sector is currently valued at $160 Bn and is poised to hit $215 Bn by 2020.

ShopX acqui-hires GabbarDeals

Bengaluru based ShopX, a business to business e-commerce platform for small traders, has acqui-hired GabbarDeals, an omnichannel mobile phone retail brand.

The acquisition gives ShopX the assets, including stores and brand partnerships, of GabbarDeals, allowing it to expand its organized retail operations beyond Tier 1 cities in India. It will launch ShopX Edge, a chain of technology-powered mobile and electronic stores in Maharashtra, where GabbarDeals has a strong offline presence.

GabbarDeals sold phones of different brands online and offline as well. It had stores in Pune and Jalgaon with digitally enhanced features. The company claims to have achieved gross merchandise value (GMV) of Rs 1,000 crore across five years for its mobiles and electronics products.

Run by 10i Commerce Services Pvt. Ltd, ShopX was founded in 2014 by Sharma and Apoorva Jois, who had earlier founded Go Untucked, a startup in the fashion apparel segment. The B2B venture helps local kirana stores and small retailers conduct transactions on a single platform. ShopX primarily operates in three categories, food and groceries, digital and electronic services.

The company has more than 50,000 retailers on its network and currently is present in 300 towns and cities across India. It has three streams of revenue—a small, one-time fee whenever a retailer signs up, a transactional margin on sales from consumer brands on their network and revenues from marketing and brand building activities.

Swiggy acquires AI start-up Kint.io

Online food delivery start-up Swiggy has made its first acqui-hire in the deep technology space through an AI start-up Kint.io for an undisclosed amount. As part of this, the founding team of Kint.io will join Swiggy.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company, which is also foraying into the hyperlocal delivery space, will join Swiggy to boost its computer vision technology and elevate consumer experience. The acqui-hire development comes just a few months after the company closed its mammoth funding round of $1 billion, which was led by Naspers and saw participation from China’s Tencent Holdings.

The round saw Swiggy’s valuation shoot up to $3.3 billion. The company had been on the lookout to close a few acquisitions following the funding round. Founded in 2014, Kint.io applies deep learning and computer vision to object recognition in video. Prior to this, Swiggy had made an acquisition in the food-delivery space through a buyout of on-demand delivery start-up Scootsy in August

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As consumer internet companies in India are growing and raising money, importance is being given to building a more robust technology stack for an enhanced experience. In August, Flipkart acquired AI-led speech recognition start-up Liv.ai as they looked at elevating consumer experience of the next 200 million shoppers. Following this, the Walmart-backed company also acquired Upstream, an analytics company from Israel, in a bid to deliver real-time pricing and product analytics to the platform’s sellers.

Paytm buys Nightstay

Digital payment company Paytm has launched domestic hotel bookings on its platform and has acquired last-minute hotel bookings app Nightstay to expand its travel business. The company will invest upwards of Rs 500 crore for scaling the hotel booking business and expanding its portfolio.

Nightstay Travels Pvt. Ltd was founded in 2015. It procures unsold inventory from hotel owners at a discount and offers the rooms under three categories – boutique, business class and luxury class hotels. It operates on dynamic pricing for partner hotels with inventory being made available for booking every morning. Users can book their stay for up to three days at one go and avail the last-minute deal. It works with hotels in 12 cities across the country.

Paytm aims to leverage Nightstay to expand its portfolio in this vertical. Nightstay had raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A round led by the Indian Angel Network and LetsVenture in May 2017. In August 2015, it had raised $500,000 in a seed round from Bedrock Venture Management Pvt. Ltd.

Paytm Travel, started in 2014, claims to sell over 60 million tickets a year, and offers rail and bus tickets, and flight bookings. Earlier this year, Paytm Travel also started offering foreign exchange bookings for international travellers. The company said it has partnered with over 5,000 hotels across the budget, luxury and business segments. Its partner hotels include Zuri, Sarovar, Treebo, Vresorts, Sterling, Ginger and Bloomrooms.

Google to Fossil Smartwatch Tech

Google and watchmaker Fossil group announced an agreement for the search giant to acquire some of Fossil Smartwatch technology and members of the research and development division responsible for creating it. The deal is worth roughly $40 million, and under the current terms Fossil will transfer a “portion” of its R&D team, the portion directly responsible for the intellectual property being sold, over to Google.

As a result, Google will now have a dedicated team with hardware experience working internally on its WearOS software platform and potentially on new smartwatch designs as well. It’s unclear what exactly that innovation is, or why exactly Google is so eager to buy it, although $40 million is a drop in the bucket for Google when it comes to acquisition costs.

Fossil has been Google’s most consistent and long-term hardware partner on WearOS, since back when it was named Android Wear and Google was looking for watchmakers to help it rival Apple in the wearable space. Fossil has specialized in what are known as hybrid smartwatches: devices that do some minor smart features like step-tracking and notifications, but otherwise look and feel like your standard, semi-expensive wristwatch.

The company makes smartwatches with touchscreens that resemble other WearOS devices and the Apple Watch, but its strong suit has always been the hybrid watch, given Fossil’s design and manufacturing experience in the traditional accessories market. The issue there, however, is that Fossil, while making some of the nicest-looking smartwatches, has been slow to adopt technologies like GPS and heart-rate tracking that have existed on other wearables for years. So in this case, Fossil may have cracked something having to do with hybrid watches, but we just don’t know yet.

Byju acquires US based Osmo

Online tutoring start-up Byju’s has acquired US based playful learning system Osmo for $120 Million. The acquisition, Byju’s first ever of a US company, will help the Indian start-up expand into a new younger demographic of kids between 3 and 8, and allow it to tap into Osmo’s physical-to-digital technology and content.

Byju’s has aggressive plans for the international market and will continue to make big investments in technology to further personalize learning for students. It has been growing at 100% over the past three years and is on target to triple revenue to Rs 1,400 crore this year.

Just last month, Byju’s raised $540 million at a valuation of $3.6 billion, as robust investor demand swelled the size of its latest funding round and turned the founder of the eponymous start-up into an overnight billionaire. That funding round put Byju’s fourth on the list of India’s most valuable start-ups, after digital payments firm Paytm (One97 Communications Ltd), cab-hailing service Ola and budget hotel chain Oyo Rooms.

The focus at Byju’s has been on creating engaging, immersive content offered through personalized learning experiences to students across grades. Osmo’s use of mixed reality interactions can help it expand its platform to new audiences and applications. Launched in 2015, the Byju’s Learning App currently offers personalized programs for school students across grades 4-12. It has over 2 million annual paid subscriptions and 30 million students cumulatively learning from the app.

Yatra acquires PL Worldways

In a move to fortify its presence in southern India, Nasdaq-listed Yatra online, Inc. has bought the corporate travel business of Chennai-based offline travel services provider PL Worldways Ltd.

This acquisition will help strengthen Yatra's foothold in the southern India region along with adding more than 100 corporate clients to its existing client base of over 700. The company’s local connect and customer service expertise will complement Yatra’s technology platform and leverage the largest hotel network in the country. This will help clients optimize their travel spend and improve their travel processes.

PL Worldways was formed in 1985 as is a fully owned subsidiary of Peirce Leslie & Co, UK, even though the group’s history dates back to the pre-Independence era of India. Currently, PL Worldways has 11 offices across India with over 200 employees.

In July 2016, Yatra had signed a reverse-merger agreement with US-based special purpose acquisition company Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corp, which was listed on the Nasdaq, paving the way for a back-door listing of the second Indian online travel services provider in the US after MakeMyTrip.

Cision acquires Falcon.io

Copenhagen based startup Falcon.io makes social media marketing easy, managing comprehensive social media marketing campaigns for brands through publishing, engagement, listening, advertising and measurement. The company has just been acquired by Chicago-based Cision, a public relations and media software company.

Founded in 2010, Falcon.io offers an integrated SaaS platform for digital marketing, which allows companies to create paid and organic posts for all of their social networks in one collaborative content calendar, and manage channels, teams, workflows and campaigns. With offices in New York, Copenhagen, Sofia, Berlin, Melbourne and Budapest, Falcon counts many major companies as clients including Carlsberg, Toyota, William Grant & Sons, Momondo, Panasonic, and Coca-Cola.

Cision’s software allows users to identify key influencers, craft and distribute strategic content, and measure the impact of their campaigns. The company has over 4,000 employees with offices in 15 countries throughout the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. The acquisition of Falcon.io will solidify Cision’s market leadership in media management, moving beyond the tactical nature of PR solutions. While Falcon.io will continue to function as a stand-alone social media platform for marketers, it will also be integrated with the Cision Communications Cloud® to expand social media capabilities to media and communications professionals.

Quikr acquires India Property

Online classifieds platform Quikr has acquired Chennai based startup India Property Online Private Limited, a real estate platform, for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition signals Quikr’s strategy to build the transaction business on top of classifieds. The company has sought to grow through acquisitions since 2015 and has acquired 14 companies so far across categories. The Tiger Global-backed Quikr operates in segments such as real estate, auto, jobs, goods and services.

Founded in 2012, India Property offers in-depth information on property buying, selling and renting. The platform lists more than 6 lakh properties and 8,000 verified builder projects across 15 cities in India. It enables property search, diligence, financing, and transactions.

The startup backed by venture capital fund Bertelsmann India Investments and Mayfield has also built an analytics platform using street-level transaction data for residential properties and covers 5 million properties in south India. Till date, the company had raised $19 million cumulatively. Quikr operates two models in the real estate segment -- a co-living rental business and brokerage business for home buying.

Walmart Labs acqui-hires Int.AI

Walmart Labs, the local product development division of US retail giant Walmart has acqui-hired Delaware based data analytics and machine learning startup Int.AI, its second acqui-hire in India in three months, as it looks to strengthen its engineering team.

Int.AI was founded in 2016. It analyses data and shares it with targeted users over email as well as team messenger tools like Slack. In September, Walmart Labs brought the entire team of engineers from Bengaluru-based Appsfly onboard, which built a system for micro apps to get hosted and streamed on any platform.

Walmart move highlights its keen urge to deepen its presence in the country. The US-based retailer has been investing heavily in the country this year, starting with the game changing $16 Bn acquisition of Indian ecommerce unicorn Flipkart. The company also opened its 23rd wholesale store in Visakhapatnam recently. It claims 19 of these centres have already achieved break even.

Globally, acqui-hiring has been used by large companies to get talent in a new domain it looks to test waters. In 2017, Google acquired Halli Labs, a four-month-old startup out of Bengaluru that was developing artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions. In October, Airtel acqui-hired Authme ID services, an AI-based solution firm.

Google acquires “Where is My Train”

Global search giant Google has made its first product acquisition in India with Bengaluru based startup Where is My Train, which provides live train updates through an app without the use of Internet and the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Where Is My Train has been founded by five former executives of the US based technology entertainment company TiVo Corporation. The acquisition comes after reports in August in which Google and smartphone maker Xiaomi were said to be competing to acquire the company for nearly $30 Mn- $40 Mn. With the acquisition, Google may further amplify its presence in tier 2, 3, and 4 cities along with remote parts of the country where internet penetration is negligible.

Where Is My Train’s mobile app has recorded more than 10 Mn downloads and uses information from the cell tower instead of the internet or GPS to locate trains in real time. The app also helps people select the train after selecting their source and destination on the app. The services are currently available in English as well as eight regional languages including English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada and more.

The company’s mission is to use “technology to improve the lives of millions of Indian train travellers.” India boasts the fourth-largest railway network in the world with a total route length of 67,368 km (according to Indian Railways statistics from 2016-17) and 8,116 Mn originating passengers annually. However, Indian trains are perpetually getting delayed or cancelled. In such a scenario, an app may well be a boon for passengers.

Zomato acquires TechEagle

Online food delivery company Zomato has acquired TechEagle Innovations, a Lucknow based startup that works exclusively on drones. TechEagle will help Zomato move towards offering drone based food delivery in India, by creating a hub-to-hub delivery network powered by hybrid multi-rotor drones.

TechEagle was founded in 2015 by IIT Kanpur alumni. It works with a prime focus on custom-made drones capable of carrying up to 5 kg payloads. It is worth mentioning that the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) recently legalized flying commercial drones and also announced a policy called Drone Regulations 1.0. While these guidelines banned the use of drones for delivery of goods and food, on September 19, minister of state for civil aviation hinted at including a clause on the application of drones for ecommerce and food delivery in the draft Drone Regulations 2.0.

India is currently in the early stage of aerial innovations and is taking baby steps towards building a future where users can expect a drone to deliver the food they ordered online. Zomato currently delivers 22 Mn monthly orders and is leaving no stone unturned as far as last-mile delivery is concerned. The company boasts a last-mile delivery fleet of 1.5 lakh partners and has over 75,000 restaurant partners offering food delivery services across 100 cities in India.

So far, Zomato has made 12 acquisitions globally. In the last two years, Runnr (September 2017) and TongueStun ($18 Mn, September 2018) have been its prime acquisitions aimed at boosting its food delivery and logistics network. Other startups acquired by Zomato include MapleGraph, Sparse Labs, NexTable, Mekanist, Urbanspoon, Cibando, LunchTime, Obedovat, Menu Mania, and gastronauci.pl.

TCS acquires BridgePoint Group

Tata Consultancy Services, a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization announced the acquisition of BridgePoint Group, LLC, and a US management consulting firm catering to the financial services industry, and specializing in retirement services, through the purchase of select company assets.

This acquisition augments TCS’ financial services and insurance domain knowledge, particularly in the area of US retirement services, where BridgePoint team of experts currently provide strategic insights and advisory services around growth, business agility, customer experience and technical transformation. TCS currently partners with eight of the top 10 US Banking, Financial services and Insurance Institutions, and offers retirement services across the globe.

BridgePoint entire management team and key experts will join TCS. Their deep customer relationships and significant industry knowledge adds to TCS’ ability to provide digital solutions that enhance sponsor and participant experience, and drive Business 4.0 transformations in the $1 trillion US retirement services market.

The US retirement business is complex, so Bridge Point’s deep industry expertise and team of highly experienced consultants will enable TCS to develop a robust customer-focused retirement services business.

Sun Pharma to acquire Pola Pharma

Sun Pharma will acquire Japan based Polo Pharma for around $1 Million to strengthen its presence in dermatology segment across the globe. The company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Pola Pharma, which is engaged in research and development, manufacture, sale and distribution of branded and generic products in Japan.

Pola Pharma portfolio mainly comprises dermatology products. It has two manufacturing facilities in Saitama with capabilities to manufacture topical products and injectables. It also has R&D capabilities to develop new technologies and formulations. Pola Pharma is a leading dermatology company and it will help Sun Pharma launch our specialty and generic dermatology products in the Japanese market in future.

Sun Pharma forayed into the Japanese prescription market in 2016, with the acquisition of 14 established prescription brands from Novartis. The size of the Japanese pharmaceutical market is estimated at $84.8 billion, accounting for around 7.5% of the $1.13-trillion global pharmaceutical market.

Apple acquires Silk Labs

Apple’s HomePod is a distant third behind Amazon and Google when it comes to market share for smart speakers that double up as home hubs, with less than 5 percent share of the market for these devices in the U.S. And its flagship personal assistant, Siri, has also been determined to lag behind Google when it comes to comprehension and precision. But there are signs that the company is intent on doubling down on AI, putting it at the center of its next generation of products, and it’s using acquisitions to help it do so.

Apple has quietly acquired Silk Labs, a startup based out of San Francisco that had worked on AI-based personal assistant technology both for home hubs and mobile devices. There are two notable things about Silk’s platform that set it apart from that of other assistants: it was able to modify its behavior as it learned more about its users over time (both using sound and vision), and it was designed to work on-device — a nod to privacy and concerns about “always on” speakers listening to you, improved processing on devices and the constraints of the cloud and networking technology.

Silk Labs first product was originally conceived as integrated software and hardware: the company raised just under $165,000 in a Kickstarter to build and ship Sense, a smart speaker that would provide a way to control connected home devices and answer questions, and — with a camera integrated into the device — be able to monitor rooms and learn to recognize people and their actions.

Silk Labs announced that it would shelve the Sense hardware to focus specifically on the software, called Silk, after it said it started to receive inquiries from OEMs interested in getting a version of the platform to run on their own devices (it also raised money outside of Kickstarter, around $4 million). Potentially, Silk could give those OEMs a way of differentiating from the plethora of devices that are already on the market.

Cure.fit acquires Seraniti

Health and Fitness startup CureFit has acquired integrated mental wellness platform Seraniti. CureFit has rebranded Seraniti clinics at Bengaluru and Pune as Mind.fit, which offers online, and offline yoga, meditation and therapy services.

Seraniti was founded in 2016 by mental health practitioner. It offers psychotherapy services through 15 in-house professionals. Its team assesses the users' requirement and matches them to the right therapist. Users can then book an appointment. Seraniti claims it undertakes about 500 sessions a month in Bengaluru and Pune.

The Seraniti app is no longer available for users. Seraniti customers will be transitioned to the Mind.fit fold and will have access to yoga and meditation centres and do-it-yourself tutorials. They can now book appointments though the Cure.fit app.

Mind.fit claims to be India’s largest yoga chain with a membership of about 11,000, conducting 160 classes a day across its over 70 centres. CureFit is backed by venture capital firms Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital and Chiratae Ventures, which was previously known as IDG Ventures India. It formally launched the flagship Cure.fit mobile app in May last year. 

Another offering is Cult.fit, which runs offline centres that offer equipment-less workouts including strength and conditioning exercises, spinning, boxing, mixed martial arts, zumba and yoga. Eat.fit is its subscription-based food delivery vertical while Mind.fit focuses on yoga and meditation. Its latest offering, Care.fit, offers a digital platform for doctors and health checkups.