Wipro acquires Chinese FMCG brand

Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting, the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) arm of Wipro Enterprises, has said it has signed a pact to acquire 100% shareholding in Zhongshan Ma Er Daily Products to boost its presence in the fast-growing toiletries and liquid detergent space in south China.

The deal, which is expected to gain regulatory approvals by the end of October, will be the company’s second largest acquisition after Unza Holdings, which it acquired back in 2007 for $246 million. Wipro did not disclose the financials of the deal citing a confidentiality agreement with the seller.

“From our perspective it’s a great acquisition because it doubles our revenue in China, ,making it our third largest market. The other interesting part is that we become very dominant in the Guangdong province,” said Vineet Agarwal, chief executive, Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting.


With a revenue run rate of around $75 million in the current financial year, Zhongshan Ma Er will help increase Wipro’s earnings from China to around RMB 1 billion ($150 million). Wipro says it will become among the top three players in the shower and liquid detergent segments in China’s Guangdong province.

Guangdong is one of the richest provinces in China with an annual GDP of around $1.1 trillion.

The acquisition will largely be funded by internal accruals, but Wipro could explore taking a small amount of short-term or long-term debt depending on the economic situation. The cost of acquisition excludes two manufacturing plants where Zhongshan Ma Er makes its products.

“We have a three-year pre-signed agreement to continue manufacturing and we can extend it based on mutual agreements. But, we already have two manufacturing plants in China; so, we can decide to expand that or we could setup a new facility,” added Agarwal.

Zhongshan’s acquisition is especially significant given its portfolio of liquid detergent brands, which Wipro could leverage to serve its other markets. The company says liquid detergents are among the fastest growing categories in the FMCG sector in India, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and West Asia.

After the completion of the acquisition, 55% of Wipro’s consumer care business revenues will be derived from foreign markets, compared to 51% at present. The deal will also take the company’s employee strength up to around 10,000 people, 25% of whom are in India.

Out of the $600 million that Wipro has invested in acquiring FMCG companies over the past 13 years, $500 million has been invested in companies in Southeast Asia and China. According to Agarwal, all the acquisitions made so far have yielded great revenue results for the company, with each being valued at 4-5 times their acquisition cost.

Courtesy : Business-Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Invision acquires Easee, an animation tool for designers

InVision, the company behind some of the best design tools and Sketch plugins around, have acquired Web animation tool Easee and hired its creator, Steven Fabre.

It’s a good old-fashioned acquihire; Fabre will join the InVision team, but will be working on “other projects.” Easee will also remain available for everyone to use, says InVision’s founder Clark Valberg:

According to Fabre, Easee may not be updated as a standalone tool, but we’d speculate similar functionality is coming to InVision (possibly Craft) at some point.

InVision has been actively building its suite of tools out for the growing Sketch community of designers and developers. In addition to Easee, InVision has Silver Flows, Waybury and its Craft suite of tools. It’s not clear how Easee may fit into InVision’s mix, but it’s a welcome addition.

Courtesy : Thenextweb

Birla Corp completes acquisition of Anil Ambani's Reliance Cement at Rs 4,800 crore

Birla Corporation on Monday said it has completed acquisition of Anil Ambani's cement business, a wholly-owned arm of flagship Reliance Infrastructure, for an enterprise valuation of about Rs 4,800 crore.

Following this, Reliance Infrastructure's (Rinfra) cement arm Reliance Cement Company Private Limited (RCCPL) is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Birla CorporationBSE -0.85 %. The acquisition, which catapults the company's cement production capacity to 15.4 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) from 9.8 mtpa, has been funded through existing cash reserves and incremental debt. The company's stock closed at Rs 680.95 a share on the Bombay Stock Exchange, up by Rs 5.80 over Friday's closing price of Rs 675.15.

"Since Rinfra has mineral concessions in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, Birla Corp hopes to utilise the same by creating new capacities in the near future," sources close to the Lodha family said.

The mining lease at Mukutban would enable the company to set up a clinkerisation unit of 3 MT in the foreseeable future, the source added.

Elaborating further, Birla Corp chairman Harsh V Lodha said, the company will be able to enhance its presence in the profitable western market by expansion of the Mukutban operations.

"The economies of scale and synergies would help the company invest in brand, channel, manufacturing, product and marketing innovations for creating greater value for all stakeholders. This apart, there is scope for further optimisation of the operation of Reliance Cement that would yield substantial benefit to the company.

RCCPL has an integrated cement capacity of 5.08 mtpa at Maihar (Madhya Pradesh) and Kundanganj (Uttar Pradesh) and a grinding unit of 0.5 mtpa at Butiburi (Maharashtra).

Rinfra plans to use the entire proceeds to reduce its debt in sync with its plan to monetise cement, roads and Mumbai power businesses to reduce its overall debt of Rs 15,500 crore as on March 31, 2016, the company stated in its mediastatement.

With an eye to turn Rinfra debt-free on a standalone basis by 2017, the company's management has been actively pursuing a series of asset sales. The company has been selling off capital-intensive businesses like cement and roads and looking to rope in partners for its Mumbai electricity distribution arm in an attempt to reduce debt and focus more on new, capital-light, high RoE defence business. It recently agreed to sell off its cement business to Birla Corp for Rs 4800 crore and has signed a non-binding term sheet to sell 49 % in its Mumbai power business to the Canadian pension fund Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments).

Referring to the company's debt reduction strategy, Rinfra CEO Lalit Jalan said, the company hopes to clinch the road deal the next three months and consummate the same in the current financial year 2016-17.

Courtesy : Ecnomictimes.Indiatimes

ScribbleLive acquires SEO company LinkDex

Content marketing company ScribbleLive announced today that it has acquired Linkdex.

In a blog post, ScribbleLive’s Geoffrey Gualano said the deal will combine his company’s content marketing platform with Linkdex’s capabilities in search engine optimization:

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The company say Linkdex CEO Mark Smith will continue leading his 40-person team as a division within ScribbleLive.

Linkdex has raised more than $9 million in funding from investors including Amadeus Capital Partners.

Courtesy : TechCrunch

Pinterest acquires Instapaper to improve article discovery

Pinterest is making investments to help users discover and save articles on its visual search engine. The company announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Instapaper, the online bookmarking service that was created by Tumblr cofounder Marco Arment. In contrast to previous deals, this time Pinterest has picked up both the technology and a majority of the team in its move to boost content sharing on the service.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Pinterest said that Instapaper will continue to operate as a separate app, adding that “a majority” of Instapaper’s three-person team will be joining Pinterest. One casualty of this acquisition: Instapaper’s developer product, Instaparser, which will be shut down on November 1, 2016.

Founded by Arment in 2008, Instapaper served as an app that let users shelve articles to read at their leisure. It competed against the likes of Pocket, Flipboard, Evernote (at one point), and Readability. With a “Read Later” bookmarklet, users could select any webpage and have it saved to Instapaper to read later across any device. The service is available on iOS, Android, and Kindle devices.

Five years later, however, Arment sold a majority share in Instapaper to Betaworks, claiming that the service had become too big for him to manage alone. The deal was structured to keep Instapaper around for as long as possible, and Arment even remained on as an adviser. During this time, the company explained that it had rewritten its backend, overhauled its mobile and web clients, improved search, and launched highlights, text-to-speech, and speed reading features for the product.

Fast forward to today, and the service is owned by Pinterest. “Instapaper provides a compelling source for news-based content, and we’re excited to take those learnings to Pinterest’s discovery products,” Instapaper said in a blog post. “We’ll also be experimenting with using our parsing technology for certain Rich Pin types.” Users should not experience any disruptions with Instapaper as a result of the deal.

The benefit for Pinterest is that it is acquiring a team that specializes in saving content from the web to an app, something that millions of people do on Pinterest daily. Pinterest does have a save button that encourages users to push content to the service, but it’s likely Instapaper will assist in the distribution of articles and information from publishers. It will likely also improve indexing and recommendations, especially as Pinterest invests in how pins and videos are distributed.

Instapaper’s team will move from their offices in New York City to San Francisco. As mentioned earlier, Instaparser is being shut down. The company is no longer accepting signups for new users and has halted billing for existing customers. The service will be terminated in November.

Brian Donohue, Instapaper’s chief executive, said in a statement: “The missions of Instapaper and Pinterest are aligned in helping people easily save content, and we’re excited to join forces. The Pinterest team is working on unique technical challenges, and their collective skill will add tremendous value to Instapaper. Additionally, I’m personally looking forward to working on new projects and integrations within Pinterest.”

Courtesy : VentureBeat