Ubisoft acquires Ketchapp, a mobile studio criticized for cloning puzzle game Threes

Ubisoft is expanding its presence in mobile.

The French publisher announced today that it acquired mobile game studio Ketchapp. Ubisoft did not disclose the details of the deal, but the purchase will go through during the company’s fiscal third quarter that ends December 31. Ketchapp is responsible for free-to-play games like Risky Road, Stack, and Gravity Switch. Bringing that library of apps into Ubisoft will make the company the fourth largest publisher in terms of total downloads in the $36.6 billion mobile gaming market.

Ketchapp first came to prominence when it released the app 2048 on iOS and Android in 2014. Smartphone owners downloaded that game millions of times. But that app was also widely criticized for boldly cloning the gameplay and aesthetics of the beloved puzzle game Threes from developer Asher Volmer. In a blog post, Volmer expressed how sad it made him to see companies like Ketchapp rip off his idea. Since then, many of Ketchapp’s games have appeared to ape the gameplay or aesthetics from other, smaller studios.

Risky Road has a conceit that is nearly the same as indie developer Owlchemy Labs’ Smuggle Truck. Stack has an aesthetic style that is similar to stand-out hit Monument Valley from Ustwo. Gravity Switch features a gravity-flipping mechanic that reminds me a lot of the platformer VVVVVV from developer Terry Cavanagh. Crazy Circle is an inverted take on Cavanagh’s Super Hexagon.

But Ketchapp’s value to Ubisoft likely isn’t in its game-design capabilities. The company has built a platform that can find new mobile games an audience almost immediately. Ketchapp does that by cross-promoting its games across its network of several dozen apps. That has led to people downloading the publisher’s mobile apps more than 700 million times or an average of 23 million downloads per month.

“With Ketchapp, Ubisoft acquires a highly profitable publisher with a successful portfolio of free-to-play games for mobile,” Ubisoft mobile director Jean-Michel Detoc said. “This acquisition gives Ubisoft one of the world’s leading mobile game publishers and reinforces our advertising capabilities in mobile gaming.”

It’s that marketing know-how that makes Ketchapp an important addition to Ubisoft’s portfolio. Now, Ubi can build original mobile games and launch them into the Ketchapp ecosystem without having to spend quite as much on player acquisition. And that’s a major key to profitability in an industry where it can cost several dollars to bring one new player to a game.

Courtesy : Venturebeat

Google announces Google Station to offer free Wi-Fi services everywhere

Google wants every public place on the planet to have fast Wi-Fi service.

Less than one year after Google began connecting railway stations in India with free Wi-Fi service, the company introduced a similar program to bring fast Wi-Fi service across the world. The company plans to bring fast Wi-Fi service to cafes, malls and all other places with a new initiative it calls Google Station.

At company's second installment of Google for India event in New Delhi today, Caesar Sengupta, VP of Google’s Next Billion Plan said the company is opening the platform to anyone and everyone who has a good internet connection.

The inspiration for Google Station came from the success of Google's partnership with Indian Railways to provide free Wi-Fi services at railway stations in India. Currently, Google claims, the service is live in 52 stations and over 3.5 million users use it every month. Google also reckons that 15,000 Indians access the internet for the first time using the free Wi-Fi service every day.

On its website, the company urges people to connect with the company, and discuss how they can help bring internet to more people. It also has plans to offer monetary benefits to its partners, Sengupta added.

"We'll be partnering with large venues and organizations, network operators, fiber providers, system integrators and infrastructure companies," the company describes on its website.

Courtesy : Techgig

Adobe and Microsoft partner in the Azure cloud to help businesses transform customer engagement

Microsoft Ignite, Adobe and Microsoft Corp. announced plans for a strategic partnership to help enterprise companies embrace digital transformation and deliver compelling, personalized experiences through every phase of their customer relationships. Together, the two companies will enable businesses to dramatically strengthen their brands through solutions with Microsoft Azure, Adobe Marketing Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics 365.

“Business leaders in every industry are focused on how to better engage their digital customers, wherever they are,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Together, Adobe and Microsoft are bringing the most advanced marketing capabilities on the most powerful and intelligent cloud to help companies digitally transform and engage customers in new ways.”

“Customers today expect a well-designed, personalized and consistent experience every time they engage with a brand,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and CEO of Adobe. “Adobe and Microsoft will bring together the cloud horsepower and end-to-end capabilities brands need to design and deliver great digital experiences.”

With this partnership, Adobe will make Microsoft Azure its preferred cloud platform for the Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud. Azure provides Adobe with a trusted, global cloud and a powerful data platform for intelligent services, including comprehensive machine learning and cognitive capabilities in Microsoft Cortana Intelligence Suite and SQL Server.

Microsoft will make Adobe Marketing Cloud its preferred marketing service for Dynamics 365 Enterprise edition, giving customers a powerful, comprehensive marketing service for Microsoft’s next generation of intelligent business applications.

The two companies are collaborating to create standardized data models for their marketing and business applications — leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning and advance analytics — that customers can use to create new data-driven sales and marketing capabilities. Adobe and Microsoft intend to make the data models extensible to enterprise customers, as well as third-party developers and partners, in order to foster innovation and development.

Adobe and Microsoft will jointly work with leading companies to help them envision and implement the integrated solutions. As a result, the companies’ mutual customers will be able to harness their data for critical insights and predictions, connect customer touchpoints across their business, bolster relationships, and drive brand loyalty and growth.

About Adobe Systems

Adobe (Nasdaq “ADBE”) is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Courtesy : news.microsoft.com

GO-JEK acquires Bangalore based startup Pianta to enter healthcare sector

Pianta which was founded in 2015 by Swaminathan Seetharaman (ex-Ola), Ganesh Subramanian (ex-Ola), and Nitin Agarwal (ex-Flipkart) had received an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Freecharge founders Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon earlier this year.

"We met through mutual friends and realised GO-JEK's interest in our domain expertise," said Swaminathan Seetharaman, CEO & Co-founder, Pianta. Post the acquisition, Pianta's eight member team will merge with GO-JEK's engineering centre in Bangalore. The total strength of the engineering team will be sixty people who will assist with the Asian operations of GO-JEK.

"India has a great pool of technology and product development minds. The Bangalore office plays a strategic role in accessing talent for us across all spheres of product delivery, development, architecture and user experience, quality control," says Ponnappa.

Courtesy : Techgig

Zomato acquires logistics tech startup Sparse Labs

Online restaurant ordering and discovery portal Zomato acquired logistics technology startup Sparse Labs, as it looks improve the delivery experience. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Sparse Labs has developed an Android-based mobile application which transmits delivery executives location to both the restaurant and the consumer in real time. This technology will critical as for Zomato as 80% of its delivery orders are fulfilled by restaurants. Main rival Swiggy owns its delivery fleet and is counting on controlling the experience as its differentiator.

"There are some areas that have immense room for improvement, the most significant one being delivery tracking," said co-founder & CEO Deepinder Goyal in a blog post while announcing the acquisition.

The company said that Sparse Labs will be renamed as Zomato Trace, and will given free of cost to restaurants on Zomato's food delivery network. Zomato added that restaurants also have the option of using "a proprietary GPS tracker developed by Sparse, that can be fitted onto bikes."

"At the restaurant end, this technology will help make deliveries highly cost- and time-efficient, allowing them to optimise delivery routes and ensuring minimal wait time for riders. We've always maintained that the most cost-efficient delivery fleet is the restaurant's own, where they can utilise the same staff during off-peak hours for back-of-house and marketing activities," added Goyal in the blog.

Sparse Labs is a two year old Gurgaon-based startup founded by Pankaj Batra, an engineer from Kurukshetra University who has worked at companies like Educomp Solutions and Studyplaces. The venture has been bootstrapped and counts hyper-local startups and restaurants as clients like Pickmylaundry, Beuno, Qlivery and Spice Labs.

In an analyst call in May, Goyal had said that 80% of Zomato's orders are delivered by restaurants while 20% are delivered by the company through its logistics partners like Grab and Delhivery. The company said that while it makes money on orders delivered by restaurants, on orders fulfilled by its logistics partners it loses money

"We make Rs 20 odd rupees as a contribution margin net after everything on our online order business in India. For the 20% of orders, where we have delivery partners, we do negative Rs 2 (as contribution margin)," Goyal said in May.

In July, Zomato crossed 1 million orders a month while rivals Swiggy does over 1.2 million orders a month right now. Zomato also said that average order value on the platform stands at Rs 480, which is expected to be higher than Swiggy.

Zomato revenues had doubled to Rs 185 crore, even as losses increased more than three times to Rs 440.96 crore in financial year ending March 2016. Zomato, which has raised $225 million and is valued at $1 billion, expects to reach operational breakeven in the current financial year.

Courtesy : Techgig

Node.js 7.x News

The Node.js Foundation is preparing to say goodbye to the 5.x branch and release the next iteration for the Node.js framework, version 7.x.
Node.js uses a non-standard release model. Even-numbered releases (4.x, 6.x) are considered stable versions and are provided with long-term support (LTS) for at least two years.

Odd-numbered releases (5.x, 7.x) are recognized as stable versions, but the Foundation doesn't recommend developers to use them for live production environments. The reason is that the Foundation uses these branches to add (and test) support for various cutting-edge features introduced in JavaScript standards and browser APIs, which may sometimes break existing apps that ran just fine with the previous LTS support versions.

In an announcement on its website yesterday, the Foundation reminded users that, starting October, the Node.js 5.x version will be retired, a new version will be released, but again, not recommended for live and stable production environments, where 6.x will continue to be the recommended version.

Read more: Softpedia

W3C Set to Publish HTML 5.1, Work Already Started on HTML 5.2

Members of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are getting ready to launch the HTML 5.1 specification and have already started work on the upcoming HTML 5.2 version since mid-August.

The HTML 5.1 standard has been promoted from a "Release Candidate" to a "Proposed Recommendation," the last step before it becomes a "W3C Recommendation" and officially replaces HTML 5 as the current HTML standard.

As a Proposed Recommendation, HTML 5.1 is practically locked against major changes, and outside small tweaks here and there, we are currently looking at a 99.99 percent version of the upcoming HTML 5.1 standard.

The vote to promote HTML 5.1 from RC to PR was approved in unanimity, a clear sign that major browser makers have reached a general consensus on what the standard should look like, and what they should be implementing in their browsers in upcoming versions.

New HTML 5.1 features

As for the standard itself, there are a few features you can get excited for. They're not as many as when HTML5 was released, but that was a groundbreaking release that has literally changed the entire Web-Dev ecosystem when it was launched, together with CSS3.

The main three features that are really interesting are the < picture >, < dialog >, and the < summary > & < details > combo tags.

< picture >

Let's start with the first. We all remember the social media push to make the < picture > tag a part of HTML5. Unfortunately, the campaign was too late to catch a train with the HTML5 spec, but the WHATWG group picked up the slack, and through hard work from browser vendors, the tag is already implemented and has shipped in Chrome, Opera, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.

Technically, all browsers already honor this tag, and W3C is only making it official by adding the < picture > tag into the HTML 5.1 standard's text.

The new HTML 5.1 spec not only includes the < picture > tag, but also the srcset attribute, which goes hand in hand with the first and already are a developer's favorite tools for supporting responsive images on their sites.

If you'd like to get acquainted with the new tag, you can find all the tutorials you want on the Responsive Images website.

< dialog >

Another self-explanatory tag is the < dialog > tag, currently supported only in Chrome and Opera, and labeled as "under consideration" by the Edge team.

This new tag will let developers create dialog windows (popups) inside the HTML code, with less JavaScript code than before.

You can pass anything you like inside a < dialog > tag, from text to images, and in theory, this tag should be the death of all those "lightbox" and "modal" plugins that have flooded the open source ecosystem since the mid-2000s.

< summary > & < details >

These two tags work together, and the (unconfirmed) rumor is that they were added to simplify the creation of collapsible elements.

We've seen many developers in the past employ HTML tags in never-before-seen ways, so don't be surprised if you see them used for some other UI widget as well.

Currently, < summary > & < details > are supported and have shipped in Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and Safari. The Microsoft has these two tags as "under consideration," but we doubt this won't make it in their browser after W3C officially releases HTML 5.1.

Other HTML 5.1 features

A less important feature also added in HTML 5.1 includes the HTMLElement.forceSpellcheck() method that can be used to enable or disable the browser's built-in spellchecker for specific form elements, such as textareas, input fields, and areas with contenteditable enabled.

HTML 5.1 will also feature support for the allowFullScreen attribute, which will tell browsers which elements are allowed in fullscreen mode or not. This attribute will only work for < iframe > tags.

Other less important features include the ImageBitmap interface, the XMLDocument interface, the registerProtocolHandler() method, and the registerProtocolHandler() method.

When it began developing HTML 5.1, the W3C started with a list of features it would have wanted browser makers to implement. The features that W3C wanted in HTML 5.1 but browser makers failed to implement by now are labeled "at risk."

These features will ship with HTML 5.1, but their "at risk" status means they'll be removed in HTML 5.2 if browser makers don't support them properly, or if developers don't use them.

HTML 5.1 "at risk" features include the < menu > and < menuitem > elements, the datetime-local value for the type attribute of the input element, the < keygen > element, and the use of text tracks to expose in-band metadata.

Work on HTML 5.2 has already begun

Since things look set for HTML 5.1, and only a formal release is expected in the coming weeks, W3C members have already started work on HTML 5.2.

There are two major features in this new HTML5 specification, and those are the the < meta name="theme-color" > definition and the addition of support for < script type="module" >.

The first will allow developers to set the dominant color of a web page, which can then be picked up by scripts or browsers, and used for other operations. Think of the way Vivaldi changes the UI toolbar's colors when navigating from site to site.

The second feature is related to the ever-evolving JavaScript ecosystem, which is slowly moving towards a modularization of every piece of JS code loaded on a page. But this is another story for another time.

You can read more on HTML 5.1 here, the changes and support table here, and the HTML 5.2 specification draft here.

#HTML5#HTML 5.1#HTML 5.2#W3C#HTML standard


Read more: Softpedia

Linux Kernel 4.7.5 Released with Numerous ARM and Networking Improvements

The fifth maintenance update to the Linux 4.7 kernel series, which is currently the most advanced, secure and stable kernel branch you can get for your GNU/Linux operating system, has been announced by Greg Kroah-Hartman.

Linux kernel 4.7.5 is here only ten days after the release of the previous maintenance version, namely Linux kernel 4.7.4, and it's a big update that changes a total of 213 files, with 1774 insertions and 971 deletions, which tells us that the kernel developers and hackers had a pretty busy week patching all sorts of bugs and security issues, as well as to add various, much-needed improvements.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.7.5 kernel. All users of the 4.7 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.7.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.7.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=summary."

ARM, x86, PPC, and core networking improvements, updated drivers

The appended shortlog and diff from the Linux 4.7.4 kernel shows us that Linux kernel 4.7.5 adds numerous improvements to the ARM, PowerPC (PPC), x86, SH, s390, PA-RISC, ARM64, OpenRISC, MIPS, MicroBlaze, M32R, ARC, Alpha, Blackfin, IA64, AVR32, CRIS, Hexagon, MetaG, MN10300, Nios II, SPARC, and FR-V hardware architectures, and updates the networking stack with various changes to things like IPv4, IPv6, IrDA, KCM, SCTP, SunRPC, Wireless, Bridge, Packet Scheduler, and TIPC.

Additionally, Linux kernel 4.7.5 updates many drivers, in particular those for ATA, iiO, InfiniBand, IOMMU, IRQ Chip, MD, MMC, Ethernet (Broadcom, Cavium, Mellanox, Cadence, SMSC), PINCTRL, Wireless, RapidIO, TTY, USB, and GPU devices, and improves the NFS, EXT4, and Btrfs filesystems. If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.7 series, you are urged to update to version 4.7.5 as soon as possible.

Read more: Softpedia

Logitech buys Saitek to expand its reach in game controls and other peripherals

Logitech announced that it has acquired the Saitek brand and the Saitek line of flight, farm, and space simulation game controllers.

“They’re the go-to products for anyone into games like Elite Dangerous, Eve Valkyrie, Star Citizen, Microsoft Flight Simulator and Farm Simulator,” said Ujesh Desai, vice president and general manager of gaming at Logitech, in a blog post.

Desai said that Saitek’s products get great reviews from fans. He also said, “Simulation games are cool and getting cooler. Whether you’re into driving, flying or exploring space, there are fresh new titles available and more to come. Some of these titles are even VR enabled and we believe that dedicated controllers will stimulate and enhance the total VR experience.”

And he said that Logitech is “excited to be a bigger part of the simulation community.”

He added, “We already make gaming wheels for the driving simulation market and this new line of products will provide an even more complete experience. We care about this space and want to do right by its fans. We have a vision that will take these products further, faster. Stay tuned for future updates, as we further integrate the Saitek products into our overall Logitech G portfolio.”

Courtesy : VentureBeat

Google acquires Urban Engines to bring its location-based analytics to Google Maps

Google has acquired Urban Engines, a provider of location-based analytics for urban planning. The team will be joining the Google Maps team in a bid to “help organizations better understand how the world moves.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2014, Urban Engines leverages big data and spatial analytics to help local governments and businesses assess urban mobility and improve transportation offerings in the surrounding area. The company was created by Shiva Shivakumar, Balaji Prabhakar, Giao Nguyen, and Deepak Merugu. The move to Google is a homecoming for Shivakumar and Nguyen, who previously served as the company’s vice president of engineering and principal engineer, respectively.

After two years of analyzing “billions of trips” and “improving the lives of millions of commuters,” Urban Engine said it’s time to prepare the next phase of its journey.

In a blog post, Urban Engines explains that since its story began — during a traffic jam — it has been working to make the world as easy to navigate “as our web world.” It has leveraged mobile technology, GPS and beacon sensors, and other signals to better understand how people and objects move around the world. The company has ambitions to create an urban OS, which is described as intelligent software layered on top of our real world.

In 2014, Urban Engines raised an undisclosed amount of funding from notable investors, including Andreessen Horowitz; SV Angel; GV; Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt; and Ram Shriram, Google’s first investor.

The company has done work for customers in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, including partnering with mayoral offices and ministries within “smart cities” to help them better understand their constituents’ mobility challenges.

Courtesy : VentureBeat

Oracle buys Palerra to boost its security stack

Oracle is kicking off a big customer confab in San Francisco this week, and to mark the event, it’s announced an acquisition. Oracle is buying Palerra, a cloud security startup co-founded by Oracle alums Rohit Gupta (its CEO) and Ganesh Kirti (CTO).

Terms of the deal were not disclosed but we will try to find out. Palerra was founded in 2013 (originally called Apprity) and raised $25 million with investors including Norwest Venture Partners and August Capital.

Palerra’s business currently focuses on providing security automation for enterprise apps, covering not just data in the apps but as that data “moves across services and it offers several layers of protection across infrastructure and software services,” as we wrote about them last year.

The company will continue to serve its existing customers as well as work on more services for the future, Gupta notes in a blog post announcing the news.

At a time when companies are facing more sophisticated cyber attacks than ever before, Palerra’s feature set is in demand: it covers  breach discovery, compliance, insider threat detection and incident response.

While Gupta and Oracle are not giving many details of the new product road map, Gupta notes that they will be working on integrations with Oracle’s platform.


“Together, Oracle and Palerra will help accelerate cloud adoption securely by providing comprehensive identity and security cloud services,” he writes. “The combination of Oracle’s Identity Cloud Service and Palerra’s CASB platform plan to deliver comprehensive protection for users, applications and APIs, data, and infrastructure to secure enterprises in their adoption of Cloud and SaaS applications.”

You can see how the company could apply it as an added feature covering its own enterprise software, or as a standalone product much as it is sold today.

Oracle has made well over 100 acquisitions to date, but not many in the area of security. Others include Oblix in 2005 and device management startup Bitzer Mobile in 2013.

Courtesy : Techgig

Yahoo data breach affects at least half a billion users

A massive breach at Yahoo compromised account details from at least 500 million users, and the company is blaming the attack on state-sponsored hackers.

Names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and hashed passwords may have been stolen as part of the hack, which occurred in late 2014, Yahoo said.

The company reported the breach on Thursday, after a stolen database from the company went on sale on the black market last month.

However, the hacker behind the sale claimed that the stolen database involved only 200 million users and was likely obtained in 2012.

It's unclear if Thursday's breach is connected. But Yahoo has been notifying affected users and asking them to change their passwords.

"We are recommending that all users who haven’t changed their passwords since 2014 do so," the company said in a statement. It's also asking that users review any suspicious activity related to their accounts.

The vast majority of the stolen passwords were hashed with the security tool bcrypt, making them more difficult to crack, Yahoo said. But some security questions and answers from the accounts may have also been taken.

However, Yahoo's investigation suggests that no payment card data or banking details were stolen in the breach, the company added. Yahoo has found no evidence showing that the hackers are still inside its network.

Yahoo has published an FAQ for affected users. The company is also working with law enforcement to investigate the incident.

Courtesy : Techgig

Apple acquires Hyderabad-based Tuplejump

Apple has acquired a Hyderabad-based machine learning startup Tuplejump to strengthen its expertise in artificial intelligence, reports TechCrunch.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." the Cupertino giant told the publication, indicating the deal was likely an acqui-hire.

Tuplejump was founded in 2013 by Rohit Rai, Satyaprakash Buddhavarapu and Deepak Alur and helps companies to store, process and visualise big data. Tuplejump's website has now shut down and founders Rohit Rai and Satyaprakash Buddhavarapu have joined Apple, as indicated by their LinkedIn profiles. Third co-founder Deepak Alur has joined Premji Invest-backed Anaplan as engineering head.

This deal comes a month after Apple acquired another machine learning company Turi. It had also bought deep learning company Perceptio in October last year.

Apple's India foray

In May, Apple CEO Tim Cook had announced plans to setup a "design and development" startup accelerator in Bengaluru, during his first public visit to the country. The company had agreed to lease more than 40,000 square feet of office space in Bengaluru, ET reported in July this year.

Cook also inaugurated the company's first development centre in Hyderabad that is expected to work on Apple Maps, and stated plans to open its own retail outlets in the country, at a time when the Cupertino giant is doubling down on its India business.

In July, Cook said that iPhone sales in India had grown by 51% in the first nine months, despite a global slowdown in its iPhone sales.

Courtesy : Techgig

Johnson and Johnson to buy Abbott's eye surgery unit for $4.33 bn

Johnson & Johnson agreed to buy Abbott Laboratories’ eye-surgery equipment unit for $4.33 billion, moving the health-care giant toward its goal of boosting its three core businesses.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017, the companies said Friday in separate statements. The unit, called Abbott Medical Optics, makes equipment used in surgeries to repair cataracts and in Lasik procedures to improve vision, as well as eye drops and solutions. It generated $1.13 billion in sales for Abbott in 2015.

J&J, the world’s biggest maker of health-care products, has been chasing deals for all three of its main businesses to boost growth and offset potential competition for prescription medicines, the largest unit at the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company. For Abbott, the divestiture is another step in Chief Executive Officer Miles White’s effort to refocus the company since spinning off AbbVie Inc. in 2013 and agreeing this year to acquire Alere Inc., a medical testing company, and St. Jude Medical Inc., another device maker.

Abbott’s optics unit is “a self-contained business and had very little synergy with anything else in their device portfolio,” Debbie Wang, an analyst at Morningstar, said in a telephone interview. The company wants to take its medical device division “down the path of these more sophisticated products that St. Jude offers,” she said.

Abbott’s Purchases

J&J’s medical devices and diagnostics business accounted for 36 percent of revenue in 2015, down from 41 percent in 2012. Consumer products, J&J’s third major unit, had 19 percent of the company’s sales last year.

Abbott, based in Abbott Park, Illinois, paid $2.8 billion for the medical optics unit in 2009. The sale will give Abbott a much-needed infusion of cash. It’s in the middle of purchasing St. Jude Medical Inc. for $25 billion and agreed to buy Alere Inc. for $5.8 billion, an acquisition that has hit numerous roadblocks since it was announced in February.

White has said he had financing in place to complete both deals, although it could involve issuing additional equity, a move investors frowned upon. The extra cash obtained from selling the fast-growing eye care business would ease the financial demands on the company.

Easier Financing

“A lot of people in the market are going to look at this and say this will preclude them from having to do the equity raise, which investors would like,” said Jonathan Palmer, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “It makes the financial aspects of both deals easier to manage or swallow,” and it makes completion of the Alere acquisition more probable, he said.

Abbott is currently focused on building a leadership position in cardiovascular devices and expanding in diagnostics, White said in the company’s statement. St. Jude is the leading maker of devices to treat heart failure, while Alere is the No. 1 maker of medical tests that are conducted at the point of care.

The latest deal makes sense from a product perspective for both Johnson & Johnson and Abbott, Palmer said. While the ophthalmology business is strong in surgical equipment, it doesn’t have contact lenses, a difficult area to develop organically. J&J already sells contacts, and the acquisition will boost its surgical offerings, Palmer said.

Alere rose 2.7 percent to close at $44.07 in New York, well below Abbott’s $56-a-share offer, while Abbott’s shares increased 1.8 percent to $41.87. Johnson & Johnson fell less than 1 percent to $118.25.

Courtesy : Bloomberg

Arya.ai Launches AI Tool To Build Intelligence Quickly Into Systems

Artificial Intelligence start-up Arya.ai announced on Monday the global launch of 'Braid, an open Source tool to build intelligence quickly into systems.

"Open sourcing key tools in AI, will help discover newer, interesting and more impactful use cases and applications for AI that we may not have even thought of," said Vinay Kumar Sankarapu, CEO and founder of Arya.ai.

Technology companies and start-ups trying to create products that use Artificial Intelligence are racing to build neural networks. By their very nature however, neural networks are complex and call for Deep Learning.

Building neural networks, which are not unlike actual human brains with their complex layers, is a resource-intensive, expensive and time consuming process.

And yet, these need to function flawlessly at large scale to handle tasks like speech and language processing, image processing, intelligent virtual assistants and even self-driving cars.

Braid is offered, free and open source, to companies that use research scientists and technologists developing these networks.

While several developer platforms and tools exist to develop neural networks, Braid has the advantage of being flexible, customizable, and modular, a meta-framework that works with operating systems for Deep Learning, the company said in a statement.

Braid is also simple and scalable for use with networks that need the handling of many data points at large volume, it added.

For AI to understand, say, medical radiology reports, a neural network with millions of neurones trained and defined into the architecture would be needed to learn the task, Sankarapu explained.

"Currently, developing applications on these frameworks needs substantial resource investments in terms of specialized skills and long cycle times, but now, with Braid, it is easy to start up development immediately and deploy the tool," Sankarapu noted.

Braid is the brainchild of two Indian Institute of Technology Bombay alumni Vinay Kumar Sankararapu, and Deekshith Marla.

Courtesy : Techgig

Oracle Proposes That NetBeans Move To Apache

NetBeans is often regarded as the also ran in the IDE stakes, but this is more an error of perception than reality. Lots of people use it and lots of people think it is better than the alternatives - me for one. Now the news is worrying. Oracle, a company well known for caring little for open source, is trying to get Apache to take on NetBeans. Is this the end, or the beginning...


If you don't use NetBeans, and especially if you use Eclipse, you might not be too worried about its fate. But you should be. Oracle took over Sun's collection of open source software when it took over Sun and it hasn't done a particularly good job of managing the projects. So far we have seen Open Office move to Apache and slow down development to the point where rumors of its closure seem all too believable. While MySQL hasn't suffered the same fate, presumably because Oracle is making some money out of the enterprise edition, it did spark the fork to MariaDB and the community is still worried that the enterprise edition is hurting the core open source MySQL. Of course, there is also Java which has been a source of worry since Oracle took over control.

NetBeans looks like being the next source of anxiety.

While it started out aimed at Java, today it is a full featured IDE that can cope with HTML, JavaScript, PHP, C and C++, plus a few others via plugins. It is reasonably fast and does all of the things you expect from a modern IDE - and it doesn't crash much, which is what finally made me switch from Eclipse.

At the moment NetBeans is, in my opinion, the number one cross-platform multi-language open source IDE.

Now the news is that it is being considered for adoption by the Apache Foundation. To most this presumably looks like Oracle giving up on NetBeans and leaving it to fend for itself in Apache. Look what happened to Open Office, and to many other projects. The disasters are so numerous that some are saying that Apache is where projects go to die. On the other hand NetBeans has 1.5 million users and a thriving community, so perhaps it will survive the transition and emerge stronger than ever.

The problem with this rosy view of things is that it ignores the support that Oracle currently provides the project. Most of the commits are by Oracle programmers paid for by Oracle. Given how focused Oracle is on its bottom line profit, it is likely the the plan is to cut support for NetBeans by not paying for programmers to work on it.

What is absolutely clear is that Oracle plans to save some money by not having to support NetBeans. It has asked that Apache takes over and migrates:

the large existing Mercurial repository to Apache Git

internal Oracle release infrastructure to Apache infrastructure

plugin publication system, plugins.netbeans.org, to Apache infrastructure

website and related content management system to Apache infrastructure

any other infrastructure that they might have missed.

There is currently no word on how many paid programmers Oracle will supply or let go.

So is this the end for NetBeans?

Probably not, but only because it is so well developed. It is a fairly mature product which only really needs maintenance to keep it up with the latest language releases. It doesn't really seem to need any deep cleaning of the code base, which Open Office needed when it was forked to LibreOffice. And there isn't a faction that want to fork it to another project and so split its programming resources.

The conclusion, and this is my conclusion, is that in this case things are not as bad as they might seem to be at first look. Yes, Oracle is trying to dump NetBeans but the community can probably carry it. What happens if Apache decides not to take it is a bigger and more worrying question - it can hardy move to the Eclipse Foundation!

If you haven't tried NetBeans I urge you to give it a go - you will be pleasantly surprised, unless of course you're a "emacs is enough" sort of programmer.

Courtesy : Techgig

Gmail will soon support emails with responsive designs for better mobile viewing

Gmail is the email client of choice for many users, and for good reason. While Gmail offers a lot of features, there are still things that the service lacks. Today, Google is crossing one of those off the list with the announcement of support for emails with a responsive design.

What does this mean exactly? A responsive email is more or less like a responsive website, you can view it on any screen regardless of size and things are still going to look properly formatted. Over the past few years website have finally embraced these designs, but many of the emails we get on a daily basis have not. That makes text hard to read, buttons hard to push, and just provides an unpleasant experience since you constantly have to scroll back and forth if you’ve zoomed in.

With a responsive design, emails can be better suited for mobile devices without sacrificing a usable design on the desktop. Buttons will be easier to press, content will be easier to see, and it will be an overall better experience. To create emails like this, Google has support documents available which can be used to better utilize this new feature.

According to Google, these changes will be rolling out later this month.

Courtesy : Techgig

Quikr snaps up StayGlad, third buy in beauty space

Online classifieds firm Quikr has acquired StayGlad, an online beauty services startup founded in 2015 and which had received funding from Delhi very founder Sahil Barua and Tracxn Labs. The deal size was not disclosed. This is Quikr's fifth acquisition in five months and three of these were in on-demand beauty services.

Quikr has been on an acquisition spree since May when it acquired beauty services player Salosa to ramp up its QuikrServices platform. It then branded the services as At HomeDiva in July . The company has since acquired beauty startup Zapluk, in August, and now StayGlad. AtHomeDiva currently offers on-demand, in-home beauty services across six cities, including Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Gurugram and Hyderabad.

The Bengaluru-based Quikr, which is valued at $1.2 billion, also acquired hiring platform Hiree in July and vehicle maintenance startup Stepni early this month. In January, it had acquired real estate portal Commonfloor for $100 million.

PD Sundar, head of QuikrServices, said, "On-demand beauty is one of our fastest growing service categories. With well more than half of our consumers coming back to us with bigger ticket sizes, the demand is strong. We want to continue ensuring that we maintain the high standards of quality."

He said StayGlad had a high 70% customer repeat rate. StayGlad was founded by IIT-Kharagpur alumni Prateek Jain, Shashank Gupta and Kavish Desai.It offers more than 100 types of services. It does hundreds of orders every day at an average value of Rs 1,400 per transaction.

Courtesy : Techgig

Google launches final release version of Angular 2.0

After Google launched the first version of its Angular web application framework in 2010, it quickly became one of the hottest web technologies. Since then, the web has changed, though, and when Google announced Angular 2 in 2014, it created quite a stir in the web development community because this new version wasn’t just an update, but instead a complete rewrite that wasn’t compatible with the older version. Today, after numerous preview and beta releases, the company is officially launching the final release version of Angular 2.0.

“Angular 1 first solved the problem of how to develop for an emerging web,” the company writes in today’s announcement. “Six years later, the challenges faced by today’s application developers, and the sophistication of the devices that applications must support, have both changed immensely.”

Application developers today, however, also have a far wider choice of JavaScript frameworks. Facebook’s React framework especially has a lot of momentum behind it, though, to be fair, the two projects have slightly different styles (Angular is a far more opinionated framework, for example) and strengths (React Native makes it easy to build native apps, for example). But given that Google doesn’t give developers who built applications with React 1.x an easy upgrade path, many of them are now looking at which technology to use next.

Angular 2.0 introduces a number of new features, including better support for modern browsers and mobile development. The team also moved a lot of the core functionality into modules that now make it easier to use third-party libraries in addition to the built-in ones. The team now also recommends that developers use TypeScript to write their apps. TypeScript is a Microsoft-developed superset of JavaScript that adds features like static typing and class-based object-oriented programming.


Looking ahead, the Angular team plans to provide developers with more guides and examples to help them learn Angular 2.0 faster. In addition, the team plans to put more work into animations for Angular 2.0 and move its WebWorker support out of its experimental branch. Angular Universal, a project that lets you render your app server-side so first-time users will quickly see a server-rendered version of your site, for example, will also soon get support for more languages.

Going forward, the team will also move to releasing Angular updates through three channels (major, minor and patch). Major versions are those that introduce incompatible API changes. Minor versions signal the addition of backwards-compatible functionality and the version numbers for the patch version ticks up as backwards-compatible bugs are fixed.

Courtesy : Techgig

PayU acquires Citrus Pay for $130 million

Global online payment service provider PayU has acquired Indian payments technology player, Citrus Pay, for $130 million in an all-cash deal, a joint-statement said here on Wednesday. The agreement is due to close in the third quarter of 2016. The statement described PayU’s $130 million transaction as the largest ever merger and acquisition cash deal in the Indian fintech sector.

“Today’s announcement is a significant milestone for both businesses, as well as the fintech industry in India. It is exciting for everyone across the PayU and Citrus teams as we bring together new capabilities that will help us to better serve our collective clients.” said Laurent le Moal, CEO of PayU.

The deal will grow PayU India customers to more than 30 million, processing a forecasted 150 million transactions in 2016 worth a combined $4.2 billion, growing at more than 50 per cent year-on-year, the statement said.

“The agreement also enables PayU to quickly bring additional innovative financial services to market for its business and consumer customers,” it added.

Amrish Rau, currently Citrus Pay managing director, will become CEO of PayU in India. Reporting to PayU Global CEO, Laurent le Moal, he will lead entrepreneurial management team across PayU and Citrus Pay.

Citrus Pay founder Jitendra Gupta will drive PayU’s Fintech foray into credit through Citrus Pay’s Lazypay, while Shailaz Nag, PayU co-founder, will focus on new areas of growth through bank alliances.

Nitin Gupta, PayU co-founder, will help complete the transition to the new leadership team before departing PayU to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions. Citrus Pay was founded in 2011 by Jitendra Gupta. PayU is part of Naspers, a global Internet and entertainment group, and one of the largest technology investors in the world. Investec acted as the sole advisor to the transaction.

Oracle acquires LogFire for cloud-based warehouse management

Oracle announced Tuesday it's acquiring LogFire, an Atlanta, Ga.-based company that provides cloud-based warehouse management applications to boost supply chain efficiency.

LogFire, which is used by 40 companies including Glad and Ryder rental trucks, will remain available. The company claims expertise in installing Tier 1 warehouse management solutions (WMS) and having the software to power it.

The LogFire team will be integrated into Oracle's Supply Chain Management (SCM) division.

"Oracle will leverage our expertise in the cloud-based warehouse management space while we integrate into Oracle Supply Chain Management (SCM) Cloud's broad suite of innovative applications that enables supply chain organizations to modernize their supply chain processes," wrote Diego Pantoja-Navajas, founder and CEO of LogFire, in a statement.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

"The addition of LogFire will complement the logistics functionality of the Oracle SCM Cloud by adding cloud-based warehouse management capabilities," wrote Rick Jewell, SVP of Oracle SCM Applications Development, in a statement.

Courtesy : ZDNET

GoDaddy acquires Serbia’s ManageWP, a multi-site WordPress management tool

Internet domain name registrar and web hosting behemoth GoDaddy has acquired ManageWP, a platform that lets users manage multiple websites from a single dashboard. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded out of Arizona in 1997, GoDaddy is one of the world’s biggest registrars, with 60 million domain names under its wing. The company has been diversifying in recent years, and it also now offers a bookkeeping service, the result of its 2012 acquisition of Outright. It later acquired Ronin to integrate invoicing into this service. And in May this year, GoDaddy snapped up cloud-based communications company FreedomVoice, shortly before launching a new standalone app called Flare, designed to help budding entrepreneurs garner feedback for their business ideas.

So while GoDaddy is better known as a domain-registration company, it has actually been pushing into related fields as it searches for a bigger piece of the action. And this is where ManageWP comes into play.

Founded out of Belgrade, Serbia, in 2010, ManageWP offers a range of services, including website monitoring, backups, automated migration, deployment, publishing, and more, but its single centralized dashboard for managing multiple WordPress websites is the real selling point here. The move makes sense for GoDaddy in many ways, given that it already offers domain-name registrations and hosting — now it can offer bloggers better publishing tools, too. Moreover, there is already some synergy between the two companies, with ManageWP stating that eight percent of all websites it manages are hosted on GoDaddy.

“GoDaddy is serious about investing in WordPress, and ManageWP is by far the leading tool for managing WordPress sites,” explained Jeff King, SVP of hosting at GoDaddy, in a press release. “Together, we’ll bring ManageWP to the scale of GoDaddy, helping web designers and developers save thousands of work hours and touch millions of websites globally, no matter where they are hosted.”

According to a ManageWP statement, nothing will change with regards to the “pricing model, feature set or the way ManageWP operates,” but as a result of this acquisition GoDaddy will offer some of ManageWP’s premium features for free. So this can be viewed like a value-added service to entice prospective customers to join GoDaddy, or as a means to keep existing customers happy.

Courtesy : VentureBeat

Amazon India plans to invest in online food delivery startup Swiggy

 Amazon India is considering an investment in online food delivery startup Swiggy and has held several rounds of discussions with the Bengaluru-based startup over the past three months, according to four people directly aware of the ongoing negotiations.
Swiggy has also attracted the attention of other strategic investors, including Alibaba -backed Chinese food delivery venture Ele.me, said the sources. "Everyone is talking since they are doing really well but it is not certain that a deal will be closed," said one of the people quoted above, who also confirmed that other Chinese investors have approached Swiggy seeking to invest in it.

Founded by BITS-Pilani alumnus Sriharsha Majety, the CEO, along with Rahul Jaimini and Nandan Reddy, Swiggy is regarded as one of the stronger players in a market which has seen several casualties.

It competes with Zomato and Rocket Internet's Foodpanda . At its last round of funding in August, the company was valued at an estimated $190-200 million (Rs 1,300-1,350 crore).

Several discussions with Amazon
While ET could not determine the exact contours of the transaction or the identity of the other potential investors, negotiations with Amazon have progressed the most.
Swiggy's executives have held at least three rounds of meetings with Amazon's India head Amit Agarwal, besides discussions with corporate development head Abhijeet Muzumdar.

According to people aware of Amazon's operating style, deals typically take 3-4 months to close. Amazon India and Swiggy declined to comment on what they described as "market speculation".

Ele.me did not reply to emailed questions. The Seattle-based Amazon has expressed interest in the strong consumer focus demonstrated by Swiggy, the sources said. However, it is also keen that Swiggy records gross profits before a deal is finalised.

Swiggy, which has raised about $72 million so far, is yet to achieve break-even. It counts Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners as main investors.

Experts are of the view that a deal with Swiggy can help Amazon expand the scope of its grocery delivery business, Amazon Now.

For the Bengaluru startup, a deal with the e-commerce giant can help improve utilization of its delivery personnel, of whom it employs about 4,000.

Synergies in hyper-local
"There are synergies in hyperlocal cross-utilization. Amazon will get a big food business and a hyper-local fleet on whose backbone they can grow aggressively in grocery as well," said an investor in the hyper-local market.

"For Swiggy, getting a high order density will lead to better utilization of the hyper-local fleet leading to a sustainable business. After food, the next logical expansion would be grocery and Amazon Now does grocery, so maybe that's the synergy."

In the past, Amazon has backed hyper-local services company Housejoy, besides buying stakes in companies such as gift cards player QwikCilver and online financial marketplace Bankbazaar in India.
Swiggy is currently focussing on expanding its restaurant base across cities and to break even at an operational level. Its core value proposition is its dedicated delivery fleet to fulfil orders and a zero minimum order.
However, the company has also indicated that in a bid to scale further, it will look at joint ventures with chefs and restaurants to expand the number of offerings. It is yet to scale that product.
Swiggy is fulfilling close to 40,000 orders per day. Online penetration within the takeout segment was only 2 per cent in India while it was 20-30 per cent in China, the UK and Canada, according to Morgan Stanley.

The investment bank estimates that the online food aggregation business can grow from almost nothing in 2014 to $4.4 billion in 2020.But while the opportunity in the space remains large, startups have been grappling with scale and hyper-competition, as they continue to lose money on every transaction, leading to some players shutting down and others changing their business model.

Courtesy : Techgig

Box will soon be a Google Docs storage option for enterprise, searchable via Springboard

Box, a large cloud-based file storage solution oft-used in enterprise applications, is partnering with Google to bring better Docs, Sheets, and Slides integration to customers who use both services. This agreement was announced today at the company’s annual enterprise conference, BoxWorks (via TechCrunch), by Box’s CEO Aaron Levie and Google’s SVP of Google’s cloud offerings Diane Greene…

Before today, Box users have been able to create and store Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides but the process was not handled in a way that’s anything close to seamless. With today’s announcement, however, we learn that users will soon be able work directly from Box as well as use Google’s enterprise search Springboard engine to locate documents — no matter where they’re stored.

Announced earlier this year, Springboard helps enterprise users quickly search through all of their App for Work files to find what they are looking for. Box is one of Google Springboard’s first partners and this integration between services shows how Google wants this service to work.

While it may seem strange that Google is partnering with Box, a company that provides the exact same type of cloud storage as Google, it is believed that this partnership is mainly to help out enterprise customers already using both services. As companies are already using Box to encrypt and store their files while also using Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides to collaborate on work, this partnership will bring these services together in a way that will make a better experience for customers.

Courtesy : Techgig

MySQL Reaches Milestone 8 Release

There's a major new release of MySQL with improvements including a transactional data dictionary.

This is a development milestone release, for use at developers own risk. In MySQL terms, milestone releases mean that significant development changes have taken place and you may encounter compatibility issues.

The new version is MySQL 8.0.0. If you're wondering why there's a jump from 5.7 (the previous stable release) to 8.0.0, the answer is that version 6 was cancelled and version 7 is the Cluster version.

One of the main improvements to the new version is support for a transactional data dictionary. This is implemented as a set of SQL tables stored in InnoDB, and has been mostly implemented in this  DMR. The implementation means that DDL statements become atomic and crash safe and reliability is increased. MyISAM is now in principle optional as all system tables have been moved from MyISAM to InnoDB.

The new version also implements standard SQL Roles for the first time. A role is a named collection of privileges that can be granted to specific users.  The developers have also provided a SQL function that returns a graphml document representing role subgraphs. Writing about the new version on the MySQL blog, Geir Hoydalsvik said:

"In the future, we expect to utilize “system roles” when breaking up the super privilege into finer grained components."

Support for invisible indexes been added to the new version.  An invisible index is not considered by the optimizer when it makes the query execution plan, but because the index is still maintained in the background, it is cheap to make it visible again.

Explaining the new feature on the blog, Hoydalsvik said:

"The purpose of this is for a DBA / DevOp to determine if an index can be dropped. If you suspect an index of not being used you first make it invisible, then monitor query performance, and finally remove the index if no query slow down is experienced. This feature has been asked for by many users, for example Dropbox."

Other improvements include an extension of the bit-wise operations to include the option of using them on binary data types, IPV6 and UUID manipulation; the addition of Set Persist for global variables so you can persist global, dynamic server variables, and have the setting survive a server restart.

The Performance Schema has been improved, with the ability to look at aggregated counts of error messages reported by the server, and faster schema queries through the addition of 100 predefined indexes on performance schema tables.

The blog post about the new release includes details of all the other improvements, and a deep dive into the transactional data dictionary.

Courtesy : Techgig

Merger with Aircel likely this week after Reliance Communications board meeting

The much-anticipated $6-billion merger between Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications BSE 2.72 % (RCom) and Aircel is expected to be announced this week, paving the way for what would be the first in-market telecom merger of a national scale in the country, said officials in the know.

The matter is likely to come up for discussions at the RCom board meeting scheduled for Wednesday to consider and approve unaudited financial results for the quarter ended June.

As per the terms, RCom will hive off its wireless business into a separate arm, a special purpose vehicle, in form of a slump sale, leaving behind the tower and overseas arms. The arm, in turn, will get merged into the mobile business of Maxis-owned Aircel. Partners will have 50:50 ownership of this new entity that will remain unlisted in initial years and is likely to operate under a new brand name.

Both have agreed to bring in $580 million each to create a Rs 7,600-crore equity pool for the new entity to invest further in capex and grow business, said the sources mentioned above. Both will also transfer Rs 14,000 crore of their debt into it.

The merger comes in the backdrop of Reliance Jio Infocomm's launch, the country's only 4G technology network. Reliance Communications had started upgrading data customers to 4G on the back of Jio's network some months ago.

In January, RCom had paid Rs 5,384 crore to the exchequer to liberalize airwaves in the 850MHz band, leaving its 1800MHz band which were allocated rather than bought in auction. Aircel has more airwaves to be liberalised, said one of the persons. The additional cash infused may be needed for that, he said.

When contacted, RCom spokesperson declined to comment. Aircel did not revert on mails and messages seeking comments.

As per industry estimates, a 12% revenue market share could translate into an enterprise valuation of $6 billion for the merged company. However, analysts expect there is scope for it to go up by 40-50% in the next few years, once the operational synergies get fully optimised.

The merged entity is expecting approximately Rs 2,500 crore in earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) after cost savings through synergies between the two operations.

Recast loans after the merger will bear a term of 20 years with a twoyear moratorium, said one of the persons quoted earlier. Loan instalments will rise progressively and can be serviced by the company as long as its EBITDA rises to Rs 4,000-5,000 crore in four years.

Consultants Booz Allen and AT Kearney are helping both parties in the exercise. Investment bank Goldman Sachs and Standard Chartered Bank are the financial advisors to the transaction. Lawyers include Khaitan & Co and Kirkland & Ellis & Slaughter & May.

The joint entity is expected to pull in 120 million active subscribers, though company officials say the number will actually be higher — at 150-160 million — along with a revenue market share of 6% each.

IIFL analysts estimate RCom-Aircel-Sistema will have 20% of spectrum market share and be in the top 3 by revenue market share in 13 out of the 22 circles. Additionally, it will plug GSM coverage gaps in three of five circles where RCom failed to renew 900MHz spectrum.

The merger should help the two improve revenue market share, deleverage balance sheets, optimise spectrum usage and streamline opex and capex synergies.

For the past three years, the two have had infrastructure-sharing agreements. They can also leverage Jio's 4G network, experts said. RCom and Jio are in spectrum trading and sharing alliances.

Parallely, the company is also in discussions with Canadian asset manager Brookfield to claim a majority stake in the tower arm Reliance Infratel for an enterprise valuation of $2.5-3 billion. The two transactions (wireless and tower) will help RCom cut its debt from Rs 42,364 crore to Rs 10,000 crore.

Courtesy : Ecnomictimes.Indiatimes.com

Apigee officially acquired by Google

Apigee has revealed that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google after last week's news that the search company was planning to acquire it for its cloud based software.

Google will purchase the company for $17.40 per share in cash with the total value of the deal amounting to $625 million. The acquisition will be subject to Apigee stockholder and regulatory approval. Apigee and Google expect the deal to come to a close by the end of 2016.

Diane Greene, SVP of Google's cloud business was eager to welcome Apigee and its employees, saying: “We’re excited about adding Apigee to Google, companies are moving beyond the traditional ways of communicating like phone calls and visits and instead are communicating programmatically through APIs.”

“APIs allow the company’s backend services to talk to the mobile and web-based apps used by their customers and partners. Instead of the doctor phoning a prescription into the pharmacy, they can use an app that talks to the pharmacy through an API. Apigee easily enables this by providing a comprehensive API platform that supports secure, stable, multi-language, dev, test, publish and analytics capabilities.”

Chet Kapoor, Apigee's CEO shared his enthusiasm regarding what the company will be able to accomplish with Google's vast resources: “We've entered a new era of cloud computing, where enterprises are increasingly running business-critical applications in the cloud – and across multiple clouds. Google is the open cloud provider committed to delivering new software for not only hybrid-cloud environments, but also for the multi-cloud world."

“With their history of innovation in web and mobile technologies, we believe Google is the partner for companies embarking on digital transformation. We look forward to being able to accelerate our mission to connect the world through APIs as part of the Google team.”  

Courtesy : ITProportal.com

Verizon has acquired smart lighting startup Sensity Systems

Verizon Communications Inc. has acquired smart lighting startup Sensity Systems Inc. for an undisclosed sum.

Founded in 2010, Sensity offers a high-speed, sensor-based, multiservice, open networking platform known as a Light Sensory Network (LSN) that is designed to help lighting owners improve lighting control and energy efficiency, as well as delivering business processes that go well beyond lighting.

The company’s platform embeds networking technology in both new and retrofitted LED lighting systems that can not only improve energy efficiency and cost savings, but can assist in services including public safety, parking control, asset management, and retail analytics through the platform’s ability to support sensors, cameras, and thermometers.

Sensity has currently rolled out 42 smart city installations across the globe working with partners including Cisco Systems Inc., Qualcomm Inc., Panasonic and others; the company’s clients include Fortune 500 businesses, commercial and industrial property owners, retail facilities, municipal and regional agencies, universities, school districts, hospitals, transportation authorities, warehousing and distribution facilities, and horticulture operations.

Verizon plans to add Sensity to its ThingSpace Internet of Things (IoT) business, a platform it launched in 2015 that serves as a place for developers to create apps, for end users to better manage their devices, and for partners to market their services; in particular Sensity will operate alongside Verizon’s Smart Communities organization that currently offers connected-intelligent solutions the covering parking, lighting, traffic management and security.

“Sensity is a leading provider of IoT solutions for smart communities with a strong ecosystem of partners, and this transaction will accelerate the deployment of large-scale implementations that will drive the digital transformation of cities, universities and venues,” Verizon Vice President – Enterprise Products and IoT Mike Lanman said in a statement. “Verizon is uniquely positioned through its infrastructure investments at the network, platform and application levels to provide holistic solutions that empower communities to address their most pervasive challenges.”

Smart buy

The acquisition of Sensity can best be described as a smart buy by Verizon as the Sunnyvale-based startup not only provides a strong foot in the door to smart commercial lighting but is also a highly complimentary fit to Verizon’s quickly growing IoT business.
Prior to acquisition, Sensify had raised $74 million over three rounds from investors including, Acuity Brands, Almaz, Cisco Investments, GE Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Jonathan Feiber, Simon Venture Group and Trinity Capital Investment.
The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Courtesy : Siliconangle

Google plans to develop website 'Bharat Saves'; to offer information on financial planning

Google wants to help you save more and invest better.

The US-headquartered technology company with a large India presence is planning to develop a website, Bharat Saves, which will offer information on financial planning.

Google wants to align its Bharat Saves website to the government's financial inclusion scheme, Jan Dhan Yojana, which has since its 2014 launch seen 24 crore new bank accounts being opened and attracted deposits ofRs 41,000 crore.

A senior finance ministry official, speaking off record, told ET that Google is in talks with the government and that the company's proposal is being "examined".
He said the digital platform "may provide a range of financial literacy tools and information on financial products".

A Google spokesperson told ET: "In line with the Prime Minister's vision to create greater financial inclusion-....various BFSI organisations and industry associations are coming together to launch a digital platform".

The spokesperson also said a financial literacy awareness campaign may be part of the plan. Bharat Saves will be an app and website, both of which are being designed by Google.

In the first leg, users have to log into either of the platforms and complete financial literacy modules.

They will need to take a financial literacy test, the certifications for which will be given by the Indian government, Google and an industry organization.

Target Consumers for Google's Offering

These will open up a second section of the app/website, where users will be able to see, compare and purchase banking and insurance products. Eventually, more financial product categories will be added and the platform will be linked to PM's Jan Dhan Yojana.
The target consumers for this platform will be homemakers, small business owners, the newly employed, retired persons and farmers.

Apple pay

Google's proposal to the government comes at a time another American technology behemoth, Apple, has held talks with the government on making Apple Pay, a mobile payment and digital wallet service, a part of financial inclusion programmes.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has met several technology company CEOs and deeper participation in the government's Digital India programme has been on the agenda in these meetings.
"There were some discussions on these issues when the PM met CEOs of top tech giants at the Digital India forum in San Jose, California during his visit to the US," an official familiar with the issue said.
India's savings rate has fallen recently - IMF data shows a fall from 36 per cent of GDP to 31 per cent GDP between 2007-08 and now. Household savings have also fallen, with other data showing households save less than a quarter of their disposable income, down from over 30 per cent around four years back.
While stagnant income in real terms/high inflation for many social classes has been identified as a recent factor for drop in the savings rate, economists have long argued that lack of access to modern financial instruments is also a structural contributory factor.

Courtesy : Techgig

Quikr India acquires on-demand beauty service provider Zapluk

Online classifieds portal Quikr India Pvt. Ltd has acquired on-demand beauty and wellness service provider Zapluk (ZapForce Technologies Pvt. Ltd) for an undisclosed amount, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The acquisition of Hyderabad-based Zapluk, which had raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from a clutch of investors, including the former Apple India CEO Alok Sharma, comes three months after Quikr India acquired Gurgaon-based on-demand beauty service provider Salosa (Beawel Tech Pvt. Ltd) in May.

Post the acquisition of Salosa, Quikr India rebranded its home beauty service as AtHomeDiva in July. The acquisition of Zapluk is expected to strengthen Quikr’s home beauty services, which have now been rolled out to Bengaluru, New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Gurgaon and Hyderabad.

The home beauty service is part of QuikrServices, one of the five verticals identified by Quikr last year to grow revenue.

Quikr is focusing on five key business segments—automobiles, real estate, jobs, services and customer-to-customer sales —it has identified as new sources of revenue and fend off competition from other venture capital-backed businesses that have emerged in each of these categories.

“Zapluk’s operational strengths, trained pool of stylists and professionals and highly engaged user base in the Chennai and Hyderabad markets will allow us to expand the reach of our AtHomeDiva brand in these markets rapidly. AtHomeDiva is growing fast and the number of services delivered by our team of trained and professional stylists is growing by more than 100% month on month. While we are experiencing a high repeat rate, what’s even better is the average transaction value is increasing steadily for repeat users,” P.D. Sundar, head of QuikrServices, said in a statement.

Quikr had earlier committed an investment of Rs.250 crore to strengthen its home services vertical.

Zapluk was founded by Manan Maheshwari and Mahesh Teja Gogineni in August 2015.

The firm had acquired Chennai-based competitor Pamperazi in June this year. Lavanya Hariharan, co-founder of Pamperazi, had subsequently joined Zapluk.

Following the acquisition by Quikr, Maheshwari and Gogineni will quit the company, but Hariharan will join Quikr.

Quikr is growing beyond a listing platform to a one-stop shop for used goods by enabling payments on its platform, as well as facilitating logistics, a move likely to throw open additional revenue channels at a time when a slowdown in external funding is prompting start-ups to reduce cash burn and focus on profitability.

The company has been investing aggressively to build the five verticals it has identified by both acquiring start-ups and making strategic investments, especially in the real estate segment. For instance, it acquired real estate portal Commonfloor (maxHeap Technologies Pvt. Ltd) for $120 million in January.

This apart, it has acquired Indian Realty Exchange (123 Startup Ventures Pvt. Ltd), a real estate agent aggregator, and RealtyCompass, a realty analytics start-up, besides making a strategic investment in A.N. Virtual World Tech Ltd, a company which provides 360-degree street views.

Quikr has so far raised $346 million from investors such as Tiger Global Management, Warburg Pincus and Norwest Venture Partners, among others and is currently valued at $1.5 billion.

Courtesy : Livemint.com

Quikr acquires Bengaluru-based start-up Stepni

Online classifieds platform Quikr India Pvt. Ltd has acquired Stepni, a Bengaluru-based start-up that connects vehicle owners with service providers, for an undisclosed amount, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

Quikr has been driving a verticalization exercise, under which the company is focusing on five key business segments—automobiles, real estate, jobs, services and customer-to-customer sales—that it has identified as new sources of revenue to fend off competition from other venture capital-backed firms that have emerged in each of these categories.

The acquisition of Stepni (FO Auto Technologies Pvt. Ltd) is expected to help Quikr strengthen car-related services under the QuikrCars vertical, as well as boost its services business, QuikrServices.

Stepni, founded by Vinay Singh and Nikhil Nair in October 2015, claims to have a network of more than 125 service centres across Bengaluru.

The Stepni team, including the founders, will join QuikrCars, the statement said. Quikr aims to expand the vehicle maintenance service to other cities in the next three months.

Courtesy : Livemint.com

Also Read : Quikr India acquires on-demand beauty service provider Zapluk

Dell Closes $60 Billion Merger with EMC

Dell completed its merger with EMC Corporation today. The new merged company pushes Dell farther on its trajectory away from its roots as a computer maker in Round Rock.

Michael Dell is one of the architects of the $60 billion acquisition – the largest deal in tech industry history. He is now the CEO the newly-named Dell Technologies. Dell's core computer business, the company we've known for years, will be based in Round Rock. It's new combined data center business, Dell EMC, will be based in EMC's Hopkinton, Mass. offices.

Dell Chief Financial Officer Tom Sweet projected annual revenue for Dell Technologies to be about $74 billion, making it the third largest private companies in the U.S. according to Forbes, behind Cargill and Koch Industries.

Technology expert Rob Enderle, who used to work on acquisitions at IBM, says this is a rare deal where Dell is the smaller company buying a bigger one. But the size of EMC and Dell’s enterprise plans going forward means the center of Dell’s universe may no longer be in Round Rock.

“It looks like much of the enterprise work, or the mass of Dell, will start reporting out of Massachusetts and no longer be in Texas,” says Enderle.

"We've got the Austin headquarters. We've got the Boston headquarters," said Dell EMC President David Goulden on a conference call this morning. "We're actually a dual-headquartered company, that's global in nature. We have significant number of strategic development, R&D, manufacturing sights around the world that form part of our critical ecosystem."

Round Rock staff are no strangers to scaling up a company, but Enderle suggests the magnitude of what Dell is trying to do with EMC may inevitably pull focus to its suburban-Boston office. But, he says, the company will not lose its presence here completely.

"It's not like Dell [Round Rock] is going to be wiped out, because Dell is Michael Dell's baby, so he's certainly going to take care of it," Enderle said.

When asked about a potential shift to the Northeast, Dell spokesperson Lon Levitan said the newly-formed company will maintain the Round Rock campus.

"Central Texas absolutely will continue as an important hub of innovation for the combined company," Levitan said. "For years Dell has operated with multiple locations around the globe.”

Courtesy : Kut.org

Google: We're Working On The Penguin Launch Announcement

We must be close if Google is actively working on their announcement for when Penguin 4.0 goes live.

John Mueller of Google said this at the 44:30 mark into yesterday's hangout on YouTube Live. He said "we are working on an announcement for that there, so like when it's ready we will let you know."

That means, Google is already working with press and whomever to make sure they get the Penguin announcement clear and right. John then answered if the Penguin announcement will come before or after it goes live and John said "I don't know about before but we will try to get the the timing so that we don't confuse everyone."

So clearly, Google is taking this Penguin release seriously and if they are working on the announcement, it has to be coming fairly soon?

As you know, some thought the weekend update was related to Penguin, it was not. It is now over a year and 10 months, almost two years since Penguin 3.0 launched in October 2014.

Courtesy: Seroundtable.com

What is Google Penguin??

Sodexo Acquires Inspirus LLC

Sodexo, world leader in Quality of Life services, announced today it has acquired Inspirus, a 120-person strong engagement services company headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. The acquisition allows Sodexo to offer a comprehensive employee engagement proposition through state-of-the-art technology to companies of all sizes — in the U.S. and globally — delivering greater value and a stronger strategic partnership with Sodexo’s current and future customers.

“Our mission at Inspirus is to bring joy to work,” said Pete Chambers, chairman and CEO of Inspirus. “Sodexo’s acquisition of Inspirus allows the company to accelerate that mission through the immediate expansion of our global reach and capabilities, and the addition of key solutions and innovations spearheaded by Sodexo. This is an industry-changing acquisition. We are incredibly excited about the future and are honored to become part of the Sodexo family.”

Inspirus is rapidly innovating its global employee engagement solutions across categories such as service anniversaries, rewards and recognition, incentives, safety, well-being, learning, and analytics. The company’s acquisition by Sodexo will provide unparalleled operational sustainability, integration with Sodexo’s global merchant network, and global access.

“Our acquisition of Inspirus positions Sodexo to become a global leader in employee engagement solutions,” said Mia Mends, CEO at Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services, USA. “As the world leader in services that enhance quality of life, expanding our market reach and capability in the dynamic recognition and employee engagement category is critical to our long-term vision. After a thoughtful and thorough evaluation of the market, it’s clear that Inspirus offers the best fit across multiple dimensions, from culture and vision to technology and services.”

Following the acquisition, Sodexo will fully own the Inspirus business and its customer portfolio. Inspirus will continue to operate as a separate and independent entity under the Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services, USA division.

“With today’s acquisition, Sodexo reinforces its position in employee engagement and recognition programs, a market that is rapidly expanding,” said Denis Machuel, Global CEO of Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services. “When we talk to global clients, it’s clear that they are looking for global programs to increase motivation and performance for their staff everywhere they operate around the world. Combining Inspirus’ industry-leading platform technology with Sodexo’s international network and 50-year commitment to improving quality of life, we become a leading player in this area, delivering best-in-class services to clients around the world.”

About Inspirus

Employee engagement is a company’s most powerful lever for driving results, building a best place to work, and contributing to a better world. The Inspirus employee engagement platform draws employees into a purpose-built employment experience and gives organizational leaders continuous measures and a full portfolio of solutions to drive employee engagement and demonstrate business impact.

Only the Inspirus platform combines an integrated rewards engine, learning, communication tools, and analytics to power 21st century talent applications spanning recognition, well-being, safety, milestone moments, community involvement, and global rewards. The Inspirus engagement platform continues decades of experience helping market-leading companies inspire their employees and bring joy to work, one experience at a time.

About Sodexo

Founded in 1966 by Pierre Bellon, Sodexo is the global leader in services that improve Quality of Life, an essential factor in individual and organizational performance. Operating in 80 countries, Sodexo serves 75 million consumers each day through its unique combination of On-site Services, Benefits and Rewards Services, and Personal and Home Services. Through its more than 100 services, Sodexo provides clients an integrated offering developed over nearly 50 years of experience: from food services, reception, safety, maintenance and cleaning, to facilities and equipment management; from Meal Pass, Gift Pass, and Mobility Pass benefits for employees to in-home assistance and concierge services. Sodexo’s success and performance are founded on its independence, its sustainable business and financial model, and its ability to continuously develop and to engage the commitment of its 420,000 employees throughout the world. Sodexo is a member of the CAC 40 and DJSI Indices.

Key Figures

€19.8 billion in consolidated revenues
420,000 employees
19th-largest employer worldwide
80 countries
32,000 sites
75 million consumers served daily
€15 billion market capitalization (as of July 7, 2016)
Forward-looking Statements

This press release contains statements that may be considered as forward-looking statements and as such may not relate strictly to historical or current facts. These statements represent management's views as of the date they are made and Sodexo assumes no obligation to update them. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

Courtesy : Businesswire.com

PropTiger acquires PropRates

Online real estate advisor PropTiger today said it has acqui-hired Mumbai-based startup PropRates, a move that will help the NewsCorp-backed realty portal to add advanced data collation tool to its offering.

With this acquisition, PropTiger aims to provide consumers real-time access to actionable price related information on the property market, PropTiger said in a statement.

"PropTiger.Com has acqui-hired PropRates, which is a pioneer in data collation tools and first in the industry who gathers actual real estate transaction data," it said in a statement. No financial details were disclosed.

The latest Acquisition comes close on the heels of the PropTiger's Acquisitionof Gurgaon-based 3DPhy in August.

"With this acquisition, PropTiger will be able to augment its existing DataLabs offerings. The advanced data collation tool developed by PropRates will enable users to make more informed choices based on actual transaction prices while buying or renting property," ProTiger.Com CEO Dhruv Agarwala said.

PropRates' exhaustive Mumbai-centric data resource will soon be available to customers on PropTiger and Makaan (bought by PropTiger last year), he added.

After Mumbai, the next phase of expansion will see another nine cities being added.

PropRates has been created by Abhishek Malhotra and Rohan Dey in 2015, with the objective of creating transparency in the real estate market.

The team of PropRates will come on board at PropTiger and will continue to build on their data gathering and analysis expertise to augment and fine-tune their offering with the available resources at Proptiger.

Courtesy : Business-Standard

Snapdeal launches private cloud platform Cirrus

Online marketplace Snapdeal on Thursday announced the launch of its private cloud platform, Cirrus, to help the company offer a more frictionless, reliable experience to customers and help save costs.

This move will enable Snapdeal to ensure that business growth is augmented with platform speed, security, and stability, it said.

The private cloud solution has been built and operationalised in under a year and is timed to handle long-term growth in traffic, Snapdeal said in a statement.

The launch follows a sustained increase in online traffic at Snapdeal and will also satiate fast growing demand for crunching big data "to build personalised and relevant experiences for consumers," it added.

"Snapdeal was born in the cloud, but public clouds stopped being cost efficient after a scale, which became the case for Snapdeal sometime last year. In a short span of 10 months, we have succeeded in building an extremely resilient, scalable and secure solution," Rajiv Mangla, Chief Technology Officer, Snapdeal said.

The cloud is built entirely on open source with OpenStack at the centre, making it among the largest OpenStack deployments of a hybrid cloud in the world.

The cloud spans three data centre regions, with a dense server architecture of 100,000 cores and 16 Peta bytes of storage.

Courtesy : Business-Standard.com

Pune’s Delta Corp Ltd. Forays Into Online Gaming; Acquires Poker Site Adda.Com For $27 Mn

Pune-based hospitality firm Delta Corp Ltd. has announced that it will acquire Gauss Networks Pvt Ltd, which operates online poker site adda52.com, in a $27 Mn (INR 182 Cr) cash and stock deal.

Gauss Networks, a software developer and SaaS firm, owns Gaussian, the entity behind adda52.com. Founded in 2013, Gauss Networks is currently valued at around $27 Mn (182 Cr). For the financial year 2015-16 the company generated a consolidated turnover of $7 Mn (INR 47.13 Cr).

Delta Corp shall not create any treasury stock but will issue its own shares to equity holders of Gaussian. The initial phase of transaction is expected to complete by June 2017 where Gaussian Networks shall be merged with Delta Corp.

Founded by IIT-Delhi alumnus Anuj Gupta, Gurgaon-based Gaussian Network is an online firm that claims to specialise in games like rummy, poker, chess, scrabble, golf and pool among others. It has products including adda52.com, adda52rummy.com, and adda52mart.com to offer online versions of card games and related products.

For Delta Corp, the acquisition will mark its entry in the online gaming space. Delta Corp also runs casinos and intends to initially acquire a 26% stake in Gauss Networks Pvt. Ltd from the founders.

Founded by Jaydev Mody, Delta Corp started off as a real estate firm and gradually entered the hospitality and gaming segment in 2008. According to their website, the company claims to have three of the six issued offshore gaming licenses issued in the state of Goa for Deltin Royale, Deltin JAQK and Deltin Caravela.

The company claims that Deltin Royale is currently India’s largest offshore gaming vessel with 950 gaming positions across 116 tables and 250 slot machines.

The digital gaming sector has received substantial attention from investors this year. According to a recent NASSCOM­ IGDA study, revenue from casual gaming in India will quadruple by 2016 to $250+ Mn. Last year, about 25 prominent games were released across platforms. The Indian gaming industry is close to $890 Mn and there are about 100 ­odd game developing firms in the country.

underDOGS, a Mumbai-based game development company, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from digital platform Intelli Reboot Digital Pvt. Ltd. In April, Reliance Entertainment announced its plans to invest in over 20 Indian gaming startups this year. The corpus of the investment fund remains undisclosed for now.  UCWeb India also announced $20 Mn fund for Indian gaming startups under its accelerator 9 Apps Dev.

Other prominent players in this space include 19Studios, Zebu Games, 99 Games, Rolocule, CreatioSoft, Games2Win and more.

Courtesy : in42.com