Ola Now In Talks To Buy FreshMenu and A Similar Food Startup

Its just been a week that Ola has acquired Mumbai-based Ridlr, now it is being reported that the homegrown cab-haling firm has held talks to buy private label food startup FreshMenu following its purchase of food ordering app Foodpanda, said a Live Mint report, citing three people familiar with the matter.

Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd) has held talks to buy Bengaluru headquartered food brand Freshmenu (Foodvista India Pvt. Ltd) and at least one similar firm, the people cited above said. No deal has been agreed yet with either firm, they said, on condition of anonymity as the talks are private.

Ola may raise funds separately for Foodpanda later this year to tap the strong investor demand for food-tech startups, the people said.

Founded in 2014 by Rashmi Daga, Freshmenu is a food delivery company that serves pan-Asian cuisine and runs its own kitchen and delivery operations. The company has raised $21.5M in total funding to date, from investors including Zodius Capital and Lightspeed Ventures.

In December, Ola bought Foodpanda India from its German parent Delivery Hero AG in an all-stock deal and said it will invest $200 million to expand Foodpanda’s operations. Ola has made founding partner Pranav Jivrajka CEO of Foodpanda.

The proposed creation of a separate food entity is also part of Ola’s plan to have a group company-like structure similar to that of online retail firm Flipkart Ltd, the people said. Apart from its core cab hailing business and Foodpanda, Ola has a payments business called Ola Money. It also bought public transportation app Ridlr last week for an undisclosed amount.

Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal is considering ways to have independent assets that can together increase Ola’s valuation. Ola’s inspiration is its Bengaluru neighbour Flipkart, whose ownership of fashion retailers Myntra and Jabong as well as payments app PhonePe has made it more attractive to investors.

Coming back to food delivery companies in India, India's Ola and America's Uber, instead of solely doing cab aggregation business, have had entered into online food delivery market to heat up market preposition for old player like Zomato. It may be recalled that in January it was reported that UK-based Food delivery firm Deliveroo, also one of the best funded European startups, is in the process of hiring a country head along with setting up a full-fledged team in India.

Ola Now In Talks To Buy FreshMenu and A Similar Food Startup

Its just been a week that Ola has acquired Mumbai-based Ridlr, now it is being reported that the homegrown cab-haling firm has held talks to buy private label food startup FreshMenu following its purchase of food ordering app Foodpanda, said a Live Mint report, citing three people familiar with the matter.

Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd) has held talks to buy Bengaluru headquartered food brand Freshmenu (Foodvista India Pvt. Ltd) and at least one similar firm, the people cited above said. No deal has been agreed yet with either firm, they said, on condition of anonymity as the talks are private.

Ola may raise funds separately for Foodpanda later this year to tap the strong investor demand for food-tech startups, the people said.

Founded in 2014 by Rashmi Daga, Freshmenu is a food delivery company that serves pan-Asian cuisine and runs its own kitchen and delivery operations. The company has raised $21.5M in total funding to date, from investors including Zodius Capital and Lightspeed Ventures.

In December, Ola bought Foodpanda India from its German parent Delivery Hero AG in an all-stock deal and said it will invest $200 million to expand Foodpanda’s operations. Ola has made founding partner Pranav Jivrajka CEO of Foodpanda.

The proposed creation of a separate food entity is also part of Ola’s plan to have a group company-like structure similar to that of online retail firm Flipkart Ltd, the people said. Apart from its core cab hailing business and Foodpanda, Ola has a payments business called Ola Money. It also bought public transportation app Ridlr last week for an undisclosed amount.

Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal is considering ways to have independent assets that can together increase Ola’s valuation. Ola’s inspiration is its Bengaluru neighbour Flipkart, whose ownership of fashion retailers Myntra and Jabong as well as payments app PhonePe has made it more attractive to investors.

Coming back to food delivery companies in India, India's Ola and America's Uber, instead of solely doing cab aggregation business, have had entered into online food delivery market to heat up market preposition for old player like Zomato. It may be recalled that in January it was reported that UK-based Food delivery firm Deliveroo, also one of the best funded European startups, is in the process of hiring a country head along with setting up a full-fledged team in India.

Google Acquires Indian-Origin Founded Health Monitoring Startup

The tech giant, Google has acquired Seattle-based health monitoring startup Senosis Health. Founded by Indian-origin Professor Shwetak Patel along with four others, Senosis Health turns smartphones into medical devices and collects various health stats. Financial details of the acquisition remain undisclosed.

According to ET, it marks the latest acquisition for Patel. Being a Professor at University of Washington's computer science and engineering faculty, Patel’s past startup ventures have landed in the hands of companies such as Belkin International and Sears.

One can use functions on a smartphone including its accelerometer, microphone, flash and camera to monitor health issues. For example, to measure the haemoglobin, Senosis' app uses the phone's flash to illuminate a user's finger. The Senosis apps can monitor lung health and haemoglobin counts, among other things.

Patel who is the recipient of many awards has also co-founder of a low-power wireless sensor platform company called SNUPI Technologies and a consumer home sensing product called WallyHome which was acquired by Sears in 2015.

Earlier in July 2017, the tech giant had acquired Halli Labs, an Indian startup working on solutions based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Over the past one year, Google has announced several services to better serve the untapped Indian market. Some of these include improved translation services and better voice recognition support for local languages.

Click2Clinic Announces Acquisition Of Wellness Home Healthcare Agency, Launches Clinicopedia

The Hyderabad-based startup Click2clinic has announced the launch of Clinicopedia, a health app that enables connected home health services. Connected home care platform provides home health care and companionship services for people who want to live in the comfort of their home. During the launch, the startup further announced the acquisition of wellness home health care agency in Bangalore.

Commenting on the development, Dr. Sujeeth R. Punnam, MD, FACC, Founder, Chairman , Click2Clinic said, “This UI friendly app is being currently upgraded with My Health Manager which will have a portal where every patient can seamlessly transfer the patient reported outcomes synchronized with a popular digital health devices like glucometer, blood pressure monitor, weight scale and so on. Our custom connected home care plans to keep people happy, safe and cheerful in their own homes is also gaining steady adoption.”

Further, startup disclosed that it raised $600k (Rs. 4 crores) in the US and $250k (Rs1.6 crore) in Malaysia recently for further development of the platform and to step up its app as well as services customer base in newer markets.

Founded by Dr Sujeeth R. Punnam and Dr Murali Bharadwaj, Click2Clinic is currently working on a proof of concept with a large Accountable Care Organization (ACO) in the US for Diabetic patients with patient reported outcomes automatically synchronized with digital health and communicated to the care team.

The light weight app developed by Click2Clinic application development team in Hyderabad is freely downloadable both at iOS and Android stores. The app claims to clocked 12,000 downloads already and the company has set a target of > 100,000 by end of 2017.

“We are excited to announce the incorporation of Click2Clinic Malaysia in this month in partnership with Care Clinics group for connected home health care (unique concept where treating physician is looped into the home care delivery staff). The Care Clinic group has an 80 member strong primary care physicians with a total patient volume of > 1000/day,” said Ram Prakash Sreedharan, Founder, Chairman at Click2Clinic.

Talking about company’s growth projections Vivek Reddy, Chief Operating Officer, Click2Clinic said “We anticipate to garner profits in the first year of operations as we anticipate a tremendous need for such services in the region. Following our Malaysian foray, we will enter Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh markets by end of this year”.

To fuel its aggressive growth targets in the Indian market, the company recently acquired wellness home health care agency in Bangalore with a staff of 80 nurses and care providers for an undisclosed amount in July 2017.

“We will continue to grow both organically and inorganically to accomplish our growth target. Going forward we have drawn a definitive strategy to enter into 10 new cities in the next 1 year including plans to find new partners that will sync with our company’s growth objective,” concludes Vivek Reddy.

Naesys Acquires Delhi Based IoT Startup TechThat Technologies

A young and dynamic IT/ITES Company, Naesys Dimensions Solution Pvt has announced the acquisition of TechThat Technologies, a comprehensive Internet of Things (IoT) and cognitive solutions platform. The acquisition provides Naesys with the latest and innovative software technologies for enabling the government to transform India.

Naesys delivers innovative solutions and services to government bodies like UIDAI, CRPF, DRDO with the overall purpose of contributing to the improvement of citizen services. The firm works as a channel for smart and leading technologies while using their expertise, knowledge, service commitment and support to ensure smooth, streamlined and hassle-free solution implementation.

Commenting on the development, Sanjeev Kumar Maini, MD and CEO Naesys Dimensions Solution said, “As the demand for our solutions and services continues to increase, TechThat will allow us to serve our customers better.”

The Delhi-based startup, TechThat is a production-ready, multi-purpose middleware platform for building complete end-to-end IoT solutions, connected applications, and smart products. The TechThat platform provides an open, feature-rich toolkit for the IoT product development and thus dramatically reduces associated cost, risks, and time-to-market.

“TechThat Technologies is a terrific fit for Naesys. We are pleased to be part of this growing IT solutions and services company,” said Rohit Sarabhai, TechThat Founder, and CEO.

The TechThat server provides all the backend functionality needed to operate even large-scale and mission-critical IoT solutions. It handles all the communication across connected objects, including data consistency and security, device interoperability, and failure-proof connectivity.

Post-acquisition, Naesys brings the U-DOP to life for smart cities that foster economic growth and enables a more livable and better-connected society. U-DOP is a centralized platform and the heart of the smart city which is designed to integrate transparently and seamlessly a large number of different head-end systems while providing open access to selected subsets of data for the development of a plenty of digital services.

Freshworks (Freshdesk) Acquires Gurgaon Based Chatbot Startup Joe Hukum

Chennai-based Freshworks, formerly known as Freshdesk, has acquired Gurgaon-based Joe Hukum, a platform that helps businesses build their own chatbots. The acquisition announcement was made later this evening. The deal amount however has remain undisclosed.

Joe Hukum announced on its website -- "It's been a short and crazy journey for us - from a small basement in Gurgaon to the plush Freshworks offices - a whirlwind of a journey lasting just over a year. We will be building bots on top of existing Freshworks products, enabling workflow automations for demand generation, knowledge management and dynamic in-app self service. We're super proud to be a part of Freshworks and take this vision to their customers around the world."

Founded in July 2015 by ex-Healthkart employees - Arihant Jain, Ajeet Singh Kushwaha and Rahul Agarwal, JoeHukum is a chat-based order taking and fulfilment platform that offers services like local shopping, pick and drop, food, repairs, movie/ event tickets, travel, restaurant reservations, taxi, flowers, cakes, recharge, bill payments and groceries, among others.

As part of the deal, Jain, Kushwaha and Agarwal will be joining Freshworks.

The Joe Hukum team will be responsible for building bots on top of Freshworks’ existing products, enabling workflow automations for demand generation, knowledge management, and dynamic in-app self service.

In December 2015, Joe Hukum had raised seed funding from TracxnLabs besides entrepreneurs like payment firm Citrus' founder Jitendra Gupta and Healthkart's Prashant Tandon.

Joe Hukum is Freshworks' eighth acquisition so far as earlier this year Freshworks has acquired Pipemonk, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup, for an undisclosed amount. Prior to that, the company had acquired Delhi-based Airwoot and Pune-based Framebench in 2016, and Konotor, an in-app customer support platform, in 2015.

In November 2016, Freshworks raised $55 million (Rs 366 crore) in its Series F funding round led by Sequoia Capital India and existing investor Accel Partners.

10 Startup News That Made Buzz In The Week Gone By [10 - 15 July]

Missed the happening of startup world? Here is the recap for you. Mentioned below are the 10 news which made buzz during in the week gone by.

Bengaluru Based Gaming Startup IONA Entertainment Bags Investment From Chris Gayle

West Indies cricketer, Chris Gayle has invested an undisclosed amount in IONA Entertainment, a Bengaluru-based gaming startup. founded in 2016 by TS Subramanian and Preetha, IONA is a one-stop entertainment to Indian sports fans, which includes state-of-the-art virtual gaming. The startup had earlier raised an initial round of funding from Singapore-based Vestasia. For Gayle, India is his top priority in terms of investment destinations and wanted to invest as many businesses as possible.

Google Launches New Startup Programmes; Selects 11 Women Led Startups For Launchpad’s Build

The tech giant. Google has recently announced the expansion of its startup accelerator project Launchpad, bringing three other programmes under its umbrella — Start, Build and Scale. Under this initiative, Google India recently hosted a Developers’ Launchpad Build event in Bengaluru where they shortlisted and provided guidance to 11 women-led startups in Bengaluru. According to the Google Launchpad’s Event website, with this edition of Launchpad, they want to support women entrepreneurs from startups across various stages.

Delhi-based Startup Builds A Touch Screen Mirror With Wi-Fi Connectivity

Delhi-based startup Help Me Build Technologies Pvt Ltd. has developed an innovative touch screen smart mirror called  ‘Nuovo, that can do anything and everything with Wi-Fi connectivity and android phone. Nuovo ‘Smart Mirror’ can keep you updated with notifications from social sites like Facebook and Twitter. You can get the latest news from the leading publications, can also access YouTube videos, and even book cab through Uber. With the help of this, the user can control which app to be displayed on the mirror for easy access.

Finally, It's Official, PayTM Acquires OML’s Insider.in

The digital payment startup PayTM has acquired a majority stake in Insider.in, a ticketing platform. According to the sources, this deal is done for about 35 crores. Shreyas Srinivasan, Insider.in founder will continue running the business, while Only Much Louder (OML) founders and brothers Vijay and Ajay Nair will remain stakeholders and members of the advisory board. This acquisition will enable hundreds of millions of PayTM customers to discover a wide selection of events and book instantly.

Earlier owned by OML, Insider.in is one of the leading ticketing platforms in India for events and properties including for events and properties, including NH7 Weekender, EDC and The Grub Fest.

StartUp India Report: After 18 Months Only 39 Startups Qualified for Tax Benefit

According to a report by The Hindu, till March 2017, only around 10 Indian startups have been able to pass the eligibility for tax benefits. This takes the total number of startups actually benefitting from the programme to 39 since its launch 18 months ago in January  2016. In recently, concluded the budget session, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced alteration in the government’s policy on tax concessions for startups and said that only the firms incorporated on or after April 1, 2016, could now avail a three-year tax holiday in the first seven years of their existence.

According to experts, only a few startups have been able to pass the tax benefit eligibility criteria because not many corporate entities have been incorporated on or after that stringing cut-off date that the government has decided upon.

Google Acquires Indian Startup Halli Labs

Google’s growing interest in Indian startup ecosystem can be witnessed by this. Recently, tech giant acquired Halli Labs, an Indian startup working on solutions based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Based out of Bengaluru, Startup has been founded just four-months back by former Stayzilla employees. Over the past one year, Google has announced several services to better serve the untapped Indian market. The startup announced the news by a post on Medium, and Caesar Sengupta, a product management VP at Google, also confirmed the acquisition with a Tweet.

Early Stage Startup Funding Shrinks Sharply In 2017

This news comes as a major concern for Indian Startup ecosystem. According to the reports, the base of the startup funding pyramid is shrinking and this could severely impact the growth of startup ecosystem in India. According to the figures stated by Tracxn the number of angel and seed investments made in the first half of 2017 (January to June) is down to 260, indicating a drastic drop from 419 in the first half of 2016. Whereas, Seed funding has seen a steep decline from 278 to 152. The report further states, the total funding in 2017 at $5.1 billion is more than double that in 2016, at $2 billion and ecosystem get this number because of the two big funding rounds of $1.4 billion each in Flipkart and Paytm.

Startup Tools Launched By Microsoft

Microsoft recently unveiled three new tools that would help small businesses and startups to grow at a rapid pace. The three new tools: Microsoft Connections, Microsoft Listings and Microsoft Invoicing will be a great addition to the company’s existing rack of tools like the Outlook Customer Manager and Microsoft Bookings. The main idea behind launching the three tools is to make Microsoft users more involved in its Office 365 ecosystem. In order to make it available to people, the company has decided to make the tools available free of cost through Microsoft’s Office 365 First Release program.

Acquisition Talk: Snapdeal’s Logistic Arm Vulcan To Be Acquired By Gati, TVS

The logistics arm of online marketplace Snapdeal, Vulcan Express in talks with express distribution and supply-chain companies, Gati, Peepul Capital and TVS Logistics for its acquisition. The companies have shown their interest to acquire Vulcan Express. From this acquisition, Snapdeal is expecting Vulcan Express to fetch Rs 90-120 crore, which could take place over the next 60 days.

Sachin Tendulkar Backed Smarton To Acquire New IoT Startups

Smartron is planning to spend Rs 300 crore for acquiring new companies to complete IoT play in India. According to the company’s top executive, Smartron will spend money towards acquisition of new firms in the area of healthcare, smart homes, energy and infrastructure. The startup is taking this step to broaden its IoT product portfolio in India. Founded in 2004 by Mahesh Lingareddy, the company further plans to invest Rs 1,500 crore over the next three years towards setting up R&D, engineering, manufacturing and data centre facilities.

The company had earlier acquired Volta Motors, a Chennai-based automotive player that manufactures electric vehicles.

Other Important News

Apart from these startups news, there were other important headlines which grabbed the eyeballs of the readers. The parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries, Alphabet has officially launched a new firm, Gradient Ventures within Google that will invest in early-stage AI startups.

Recently, iKeva had launched 2 new centres – 175 seats secured co-working space in Sector 44, Gurugram’s Premium location and another 165 seaters in Mumbai.

Apart from these two, another news which made the buzz was iVOOMi, Chinese electronic major announcing its strategic alliance with the e-commerce giant Flipkart, to capitalize on latter’s Market Intelligence support, in order to extensively penetrate into Tier – 2,3 & 4 cities in India.

IoT Startup Smartron To Spend Rs 300 Crore For Acquiring New Startups

The Sachin Tendulkar-backed, Smartron is planning to spend Rs 300 crore for acquiring new companies to complete IoT play in India. According to the company’s top executive, Smartron will spend money towards acquisition of new firms in the area of healthcare, smart homes, energy and infrastructure. The startup is taking this step to broaden its IoT product portfolio in India.

A technology OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and IoT player, Smartron had earlier acquired Volta Motors, a Chennai-based automotive player that manufactures electric vehicles. Founded in 2004 by Mahesh Lingareddy, the company further plans to invest Rs 1,500 crore over the next three years towards setting up R&D, engineering, manufacturing and data centre facilities. Apart from this, the Hyderabad-based startup has also have invested in a couple of companies for its Smart Health play.

According to Lingareddy, their TronX platform brings organic growth. It is a platform that learns users preferences and behaviour to give them intuitive experience across devices. Leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence, tronX entertains its users, finds them the best deals on flights and stays, books cabs, saves their time and money.

“TronX platform for us is a real organic asset that brings organic growth. Everything else, I would rather add from outside to build a very fluid ecosystem. That is the only way we can innovate. You can't do everything on your own. Also, 20% of our every dollar we have is towards building the ecosystem. 20% of 1500 crore will go towards acquiring and partnering with companies to build the ecosystem. I would like to spend even more outside,” told Mahesh Lingareddy, Founder and Chairman of Smartron to ET.

Not only this, company has also acquired a team in Hyderabad through acquisition of a majority stake in in the Smart Infrastructure space. Currently they are in pilot phase and will reveal the complete detail about the deal after its completion.

Till date, Smartron has invested close to Rs 125 crore. After raising Rs 250 crore, earlier this year,company is planning to raise another Rs 700 crore this year. If sources to believed,company discussions for the same are underway with institutions.

One of the executive told ET, “In Soft Machines, we had no venture capitalists. I had taken very sovereign route with funds raised from Saudis, Russians, Korean and Abhu Dhabhi government. We have so far followed the same approach. A lot of this money for Smartron is coming from unconventional, non- traditional route. But Rs 600 crore could potentially be institutional.”

Smartron who has already inked partnerships with companies for devices like security camera and industrial automation is also partnering with a variety of companies like Ericsson and IBM for backend support.

Apart from all these development, company is further plans to launch its smart band later this year.

On-Demand Driver Service Firm DriveU Acquires Chennai based DriversKart

DriveU, India’s first and largest on-demand driver aggregator acquired Chennai-based DriversKart, an on-demand driver-service provider serving primarily the business segment in an all-equity deal. With this acquisition, DriveU consolidates its dominant position in the industry, catering to both consumers and businesses across 6 largest metro cities (Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Pune and Hyderabad). Unitus Seed Fund, India’s leading impact venture fund investing in early-stage startups innovating for the masses invested in DriveU in February 2016.

“With this acquisition, DriveU continues to consolidate its position as India’s premier driver aggregator for both consumers and businesses. Increasingly, we see the sharing economy offering opportunities to leverage our driver services as well. DriveU now plans to expand to over 10,000 drivers and 10 cities by the end of the year,” said Ramprasad (Rahm) Shastry, CEO, DriveU.

This is DriveU's second acquisition since its inception as exactly a year ago the Bengaluru-based company had also acquired CallAtHome, a driver booking platform based out of Gurgaon, for an undisclosed amount.

Since inception, DriveU has delivered positive unit economics, with the business growing 20 per cent month-on-month and has successfully managed to increase its drivers’ incomes by 2x. DriveU offers a reliable, transparent service to its customers at a flat rate of INR 99 per hour locally and INR 999 per 24 hours for outstation travel. On an average, DriveU customers are willing to spend 2x more than what they would for an average cab ride today – primarily owing to the high-quality and convenience of service that DriveU offers. This translates into a healthy income for the driver and for DriveU. On an average, drivers earn a steady monthly income of INR 25,000 – INR 35,000, while some earning more than INR 40,000. At the same time, DriveU also eliminates the burden of EMI payments, fuels bill and vehicle maintenance for the drivers.

“With deteriorating quality of service and increasing fares, customers’ preferences are slowly shifting back to using their private cars with on-demand driver services. DriveU’s growth is a testimony to the same. Both, DriveU and DriversKart have maintained price discipline and built sustainable businesses, benefitting customers and significantly increasing drivers’ incomes. With this acquisition, DriveU will now offer a compelling service to the B2B segment as well,” said Vinit Srivastava, CEO, DriversKart.

Post-acquisition, Mr. Vinit Srivastava, CEO at DriversKart will take an advisory role with DriveU and Ms. Kopal Maheshwari, COO at DriversKart will head the B2B business at DriveU.

Commenting on this move, P D Sundar, Head of QuikrServices who has worked with both DriveU and DriversKart, said, "At QuikrServices, on-demand drivers is one of the top 5 categories on our platform and we see a tremendous growing opportunity for this category. This merger will only help provide larger pool of service providers and build a robust ecosystem".

“We were attracted to DriveU as they have a business model with a price discipline from the get-go. They neither offered deep-discounted services nor do they lose on each trip. At the same time, they wanted to ensure that their drivers earn sufficient income and have a sustainable lifestyle. We are excited to have DriveU in our portfolio,” said Will Poole, Co-founder & Managing Partner at Unitus Seed Fund.

Quikr Makes Its 10th Acquisition, Acquires Zimmber for $10 Million

Online classifieds company Quikr has acquired home services startup Zimmber for about $10 million in an all-stock deal, reported Livemint.

Mumbai-based Zimmber is Quikr's tenth acquisition since its inception. In home services vertical only, Quikr has made four acquisition in the last 12 months, in an attempt to strengthen its position in the segment.

Quikr, which is valued at about $1.5 billion, had acquired home beauty start-ups Zalosa, Zapluk and Stayglad in quick succession last year. The company had committed an investment of Rs250 crore in January last year to expand the category.

Founded in April 2014, Gaurav Shrivastava, Anubhab Goel and Amit Kumar, Zimmber has so far raised about $7.4 million from venture capital firms including IDG Ventures, Aarin Capital and Omidyar Network, as well as angel investors including InMobi co-founders Naveen Tewari, Mohit Saxena and Amit Gupta, and the former managing director of Jabong, Praveen Sinha.

Quikr had recently acquired GrabHouse, an online accommodation rental startup, and had also acquired in-home beauty startups Salosa, Zapluk and Stayglad in quick succession last year.

Apart from Zimmber, Quikr had earlier acquired an another IDG Ventures' portfolio startup -- Hiree [Read here].

Between June 2015 and March 2016, Zimmber itself had acquired few fistful startups such as laundry startup Dhulai, white-collar service provider FindYahan, and home beauty service provider Glamnfit.

Notably, More than 270 home services startups have emerged in India in the last five years, according to Tracxn, a start-up tracker -- however only few have been able to raise significant funds from VC funds, and among these startups are -- UrbanClap and HouseJoy, which have so far raised $35 million and $27 million respectively.

Why Are Startups In India Opting For Acquisitions Amid Dry Funding?

Anyone thorough with the Indian startup scene might be aware of the sorry condition of the industry's funding situation right now. However, whatever might be the case with the funding, it seems to be having an almost negligent effect on the number of deals that we're witnessing on a daily basis. Almost every other day, we read the news of an XYZ company being acquired by another for a whopping ABC amount. 

I'm sure many of us might wonder why would anyone be willing to give up something which they have given birth to and nurtured on their own? Why would they just give away their months of sleepless nights, hard work and sweat? There can be a number of factors influencing a company's decision for submitting to the decision for an acquisition.

1) The Bank accounts have run dry -

Seeing the current steep decline in the funding rate, many entrepreneurs are preferring to take the acquisition route than pull the plug once-in-for all. The stakeholders of the startup are man king a well-thought out strategic decision to cash out even if the value is considerably low than expected or trade their stocks in their company for stocks in a company with better and brighter prospects. Further, a follow up on the whole funding process is a big challenge for all those startups who haven't been able to have clear and substantial revenue model despite having gone through multiple rounds of the funding process. This is why one can see a substantial increase in swapping and acqui-hires in the Indian startup scene.

2) Innovation -

There are times when a particular technology's quality and innovation leads to the possibility of a company getting acquired. Whenever a startup sees an opportunity of increasing its reach in the market by making use of another company's technology, it goes on to buyout that particular technology. In situations like these, the technology ends up being the sell-out. In today's times, a technology is only beneficial to the company, is it is helping in increasing the company's efficiency and lowering its costs.

An apt example of this can be Snapdeal's acquisition of Freecharge. The acquisition was a strategic decision on Snapdeal's part as it helped the company in introducing a payment capability in its system that they predicted was compulsory so as to effectively compete in India's current eCommerce market.

According to some industry experts, an acquisition also helps in escalating the product's pace to the market.

There are various recent examples of companies getting acquired which were not that much of a position to scale but their tech part served as a bait to the acquirers. Facebook's acquisition of Little Eye Labs is one such example.

3) Lower costs, faster growth

Under current market circumstances, in order to make the cut, the startups have to cut down substantially on their costs and put real numbers on the board. Hence, under such conditions, various companies are forcefully going for acquisitions. In a majority of scenarios, common investors are doing the trick. They're acting as the middleman in catalysing the entire process. A classic example of this is,Tiny Owl's deal with Roadrunnr.

Startups have to continuously grow and produce numbers so as to constantly prove their potential to their shareholders. Because of this very reason, the path of organic reach turns way too risky for them as the situation can turn within a blink of an eye with just one round of funding. All of a sudden, your selected target acquisition could be in a situation where they are pinning to acquire you or they have fresh money flow so as to gear up for a fierce competition with you and hamper your position in the market. Therefore, acquisitions are great for delivering growth faster, removing the crazy pricing pressures and lowering the cost of acquiring new customers.

4) Beat the Competition, not the competitor

Sometimes in life, it's better to join hands with your competitor and rule the world together, rather than going after each other and stunting each others growth. This is exactly what happened in the case of Flipkart and Myntra. Instead of going after each and other and eating out of each others profit, they decided to burry their hatchet and compete it out together with their U.S. based rival Amazon.

Industry experts believe that if the Indian startup ecosystem continues with its operational challenges and funding issues, buyouts and mergers will soon become an everyday occurring.

Voonik Scouts for More Acquisitions in the Fashion Space to Add New Features on Products

Voonik Technologies Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates eCommerce platform Voonik, is scouting for more acquisitions in the fashion domain and usually completes a deal within two weeks. The company will make the acquisition from a $20-million Series B fundraise led by existing investor Sequoia Capital in June 2016. While the round saw participation from repeat investor Seedfund, it also attracted new backers including Japanese eCommerce operator Beenos, Singapore-based venture capital fund Beenext, Tancom Investments and Times Internet.

The firm is looking at the acquisition route to add new features or products. Recently, it launched two other fashion platforms, Mr Voonik, an exclusive app for men’s fashion and Vilara, a marketplace for designers and boutiques.

Bangalore-based Voonik is strengthening its leadership in the unbranded fashion segment largely via acqui-hires or team acquisitions of startups in niche fashion offerings. In the last six months, it acqui-hired four startups including Zohraa, an online marketplace for designers and boutiques; online silk store Picksilk.com; Styl, which connects stylists and salons with consumers; and Getsty, a curator of personalised fashion for men. Last year, Voonik acqui-hired virtual dressing room app TrialKart.

The company claims to have 10 million app downloads, more than 12 million registered users, 100 million annual gross merchandise value (GMV) and 13 million revenue rate, reported DealStreetAsia.

Voonik has over 10,000 sellers on its platform and consists of 500 employees in its team including 250 people in its core-team and another 250 are in customer support and backend functions.

Other player which operating in the same space include fashion platform Roposo, secured $5 million in the second part of Series B round from Bertelsmann India Investments (BII). The company had raised $15 million from Tiger Global in the first tranche.

According to a study by IAMAI, Sales of apparel and footwear segments have risen by 52 per cent to Rs 7,142 crore in December 2015 from Rs 4,699 crore in December 2014. The category is expected to reach Rs 72,639 crore by end of 2016.

Talking about competition in the fashion space, Voonik co-founder and CEO Sujayath Ali said, “other sites like Myntra and Jabong are focused on branded space. We offer unbranded stuff where we don’t have much competition.”

Acquisitions: Online Learning Firm EdCast Buys Sales-University And Jiyo Natural Acquires Sangeetha Aahar

Online learning firm EdCast has acquired Seattle-based sales training app maker Sales-University, while health food firm Jiyo Natural has bought food delivery company Sangeetha Aahar for an undisclosed sum.

Online Learning Firm EdCast Buys Seattle Based Sales Training App Maker Sales-University

Online learning platform EdCast Inc has acquired Seattle-based sales training app maker Sales-University (formerly WAGmob), for an undisclosed amount, to expand its enterprise learning to Sales organisations.

Founded in January 2011 by Microsoft Engineers - Kalpit Jain and Kavita Jain, Sales-University creates apps for learning and training for iOS, Android and Windows mobile. Its clients include Google, Samsung, Snapdeal and a few Fortune 500 companies. Sales University has over 300 mobile apps for learning and training for iOS, Android and Windows and has over 4 million consumers.

Recently EdCast raised $16 million in its second round of funding led by GE Asset Management, with participation from SoftBank Capital, Cervin Ventures, Standford StartX Fund and Peneta Global.

Going forward, Edcast would continue to scout for acquisitions that provide specialised services in specific sectors, and singled out healthcare as a top priority. “Besides healthcare, we will look at the hospitality sector as well as online retail for acquisitions,” said Edcast founder Karl Mehta.

Health Food Company Jiyo Natural Acquires Food Delivery Firm Sangeetha Aahar

Health food company Jiyo Natural has acquired Bangalore-based food delivery company Sangeetha Aahar for an undisclosed amount.

With this acquisition, the four-year-old company, Jiyo Natural now aims at growing its revenue by 30%. Besides the growth in revenue, Jiyo Natural will increase its capacity by 140%.

After the acquisition, Jiyo will be delivering around 2,700 meals a day and aim to reach close to 4000 in three months.

Going forward. Indian Angel Network-backed Jiyo Natural, which competes with Freshmenu and Cookaroo, also have plans to introduce ready-to-cook meals from the next quarter.

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