IBM Acquiring BITS Pilani Alumnus' Founded Oracle Consultancy Accelalpha

IBM has announced its intent to acquire Accelalpha, a leading Oracle Consultancy founded by Nat Ganesh, an alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani campus.

This acquisition aims to enhance IBM's expertise in Oracle Cloud Applications, particularly in areas like supply chain, logistics, finance, enterprise performance management (EPM), and customer transformation.

Founded by Ganesh in 2009, Accelalpha is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, and is known for its deep expertise in Oracle Cloud solutions and has a significant presence across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and South America.

This acquisition will bring a large team of skilled consultants to IBM Consulting, further strengthening IBM's capabilities in deploying and managing Oracle solutions.

Accelalpha is a global provider of Oracle Cloud Applications consulting across advisory, implementation and managed services. Its highly skilled team serves clients across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America, with a focus on distribution, industrial and financial services sectors.

Notably, Accelalpha was the first Oracle partner to implement Oracle Fusion Financials, and also boasts as the largest Oracle logistics practice globally.

"IBM’s client and employee-centric culture and long-established scale and reach in more than 175 countries is a great fit for the next stage of our growth,” said Nat Ganesh, CEO, Accelalpha. “We’re thrilled to bring our expertise in Oracle Cloud solutions and targeted domain and industry knowledge to bear together with IBM’s strength in generative AI and hybrid cloud. With Accelalpha’s history of being a pioneer in Oracle Cloud and IBM’s deep-rooted dedication to innovation that matters, we can further accelerate value creation for our clients.”

IBM and Oracle’s partnership to serve clients spans almost 40 years. IBM was named a Leader in the 2023 IDC MarketScape for Oracle Implementation Services Ecosystem Worldwide.

Post acquisition, Accelalpha will join IBM Consulting, bringing over a large global team of skilled consultants to help clients modernize with Oracle Cloud Applications.

The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2024, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Accelalpha has primarily grown through organic means and strategic acquisitions rather than extensive external funding. However, it has received investment from Graycliff Partners, a private equity firm.

Nat Ganesh, the founder and CEO of Accelalpha, has a strong connection to India. He was born and raised in India before moving to the United States to further his education and career.

Nat Ganesh attended the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, where he earned a Master’s degree in Science and Engineering Management. This prestigious institution is known for producing many successful entrepreneurs and leaders in the technology and business sectors.

Accelalpha has a notable presence in India, with operations primarily based in Hyderabad, Telangana. The Indian office plays a crucial role in supporting Accelalpha's global operations, particularly in areas like Oracle Cloud Applications consulting, implementation, and managed services.

The Hyderabad office is involved in various aspects of Accelalpha's business, including supply chain management, logistics, finance, enterprise performance management (EPM), and customer transformation. This presence in India allows Accelalpha to leverage the region's rich talent pool and provide high-quality services to clients worldwide.

Accenture Acquires Indian-Origin Founded TeamExpat

Accenture has strengthened its embedded software expertise with the acquisition of Teamexpat, a specialist in embedded software for complex high-tech products and systems. The acquisition was announced on May 23, 2024, and involves Teamexpat joining Accenture's digital engineering team in the Netherlands. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

This acquisition is expected to enhance Accenture's capabilities in smart, connected products, particularly for clients in the semiconductor sector and other discrete manufacturing industries.

Vinay Dasa, the founder of Teamexpat, is an Indian-origin entrepreneur who originally hails from Bengaluru, India, where he was an IT professional before moving to the Netherlands. He is an engineering graduate from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi, Karnataka. About 10 years ago, he arrived in the Netherlands as an expat in search of employment opportunities. His journey led him to work for KPN in The Hague before eventually moving to Eindhoven, where he became employed by Philips.

In 2014, Vinay Dasa embarked on his entrepreneurial path by starting as a freelance IT developer and establishing TeamExpat. His vision and expertise have significantly contributed to the company's success in embedded software for complex high-tech products and systems, particularly in the semiconductor industry.

Now, as part of Accenture, Vinay Dasa looks forward to leveraging Accenture's global footprint and expertise to scale their clients' near- and off-shore embedded software development projects. His journey exemplifies the impact of Indian talent in the tech industry, bridging continents and driving innovation.

TeamExpat is headquartered in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and focuses on software development, testing, and integration for lithography systems used in the semiconductor industry. These systems are crucial for printing fine patterns on semiconductor materials, which define the performance of microchips.

The acquisition aligns with Accenture's strategy to shift from mechanical engineering to software engineering first, addressing the growing need for advanced chips and embedded systems in various high-tech industries. It also comes at a time when Europe is investing heavily in semiconductor innovation, with €43 billion of government incentives dedicated to the cause.

Vinay Dasa, CEO and founder of Teamexpat, expressed enthusiasm for the opportunities that becoming part of Accenture will bring to their clients and team, citing Accenture's global footprint and expertise as a scaling platform for embedded software development projects.

This acquisition is part of a series of moves by Accenture to bolster its embedded software, digital engineering, and smart, connected products capabilities, including previous acquisitions of international engineering services firm umlaut, German embedded software company ESR Labs, and Dutch product design and innovation agency VanBerlo. 

Teamexpat is one of the few up Indian founded companies acquired by any tech giants post covid era. Last year in October, AMD announced the acquisition of nod.ai, which too was founded by Indian origin entrepreneurs.

AMD Acquiring Indians Founded Nod.ai, An Open-Source AI Software Startup

Nod.ai to bolster AMD open-source software strategy

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), a California, US based multinational semiconductor company today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Nod.ai to expand the company’s open AI software capabilities. The addition of Nod.ai will bring an experienced team that has developed an industry-leading software technology that accelerates the deployment of AI solutions optimized for AMD Instinct™ data center accelerators, Ryzen™ AI processors, EPYC™ processors, Versal™ SoCs and Radeon™ GPUs to AMD.

The acquisition strongly aligns with the AMD AI growth strategy centered on an open software ecosystem that lowers the barriers of entry for customers through developer tools, libraries and models.

Founded in 2013, by Anush Elangovan and Harsh Menon, nod focus on Machine Intelligence, and enables its customers to effectively and efficiently train and deploy Machine Learning models using advanced Compiler and Code Generation Technologies.

Prior to establishing nod, Anush has worked on the first Google ARM Chrome book. He is an engineering graduate from Madurai Kamraj University Tamil Nadu, India as well as MS from Arizona State and a Bachelor’s from Mepco Schlenk Engineering College in India. While Harsh is a Stanford graduate and was an early employee at Zee.Aero / KittyHawk and worked on flying cars.

nod had raised about $36.5 million in total funding from several investors including 8Square Capital, Atlantic Bridge, Pointguard Ventures and Walden International.

“The acquisition of Nod.ai is expected to significantly enhance our ability to provide AI customers with open software that allows them to easily deploy highly performant AI models tuned for AMD hardware,” said Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president, Artificial Intelligence Group at AMD. “The addition of the talented Nod.ai team accelerates our ability to advance open-source compiler technology and enable portable, high-performance AI solutions across the AMD product portfolio. Nod.ai’s technologies are already widely deployed in the cloud, at the edge and across a broad range of end point devices today.”

“At Nod.ai, we are a team of engineers focused on problem solving — quickly – and moving at pace in an industry of constant change to develop solutions for the next set of problems,” said Anush Elangovan, co-founder and CEO, Nod.ai. “Our journey as a company has cemented our role as the primary maintainer and major contributor to some of the world's most important AI repositories, including SHARK, Torch-MLIR and OpenXLA/IREE code generation technology. By joining forces with AMD, we will bring this expertise to a broader range of customers on a global scale.”

Nod.ai delivers optimized AI solutions to top hyperscalers, enterprises and startups. The compiler-based automation software capabilities of Nod.ai’s SHARK software reduce the need for manual optimization and the time required to deploy highly performant AI models to run across a broad portfolio of data center, edge and client platforms powered by AMD CDNA™, XDNA™, RDNA™ and “Zen” architectures.

Last year in February, AMD acquired Xilinx, Inc., a semiconductor company for $50 billion. Xilinx is known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and creating the first fabless manufacturing model.

Indian-Australian Entrepreneur wins Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award

Indian-Australian Entrepreneur Aamir Qutub has won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award category in the Business Excellence Awards (GBEA) in Australia.

Established in 1986, and managed by the Geelong Chamber of Commerce, The Business Excellence Awards are the oldest continuously running business awards in Australia. Justin Giddings – CEO of Avalon Airport won the Business Leader of the Year and Aamir Qutub (CEO, Enterprise Monkey) won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. "With a record number of entrants participating in the Geelong Business Excellence Awards, and going through a stringent judging process, the Awards are now more competitive than ever. Ask any of the winners, they’re absolutely worth winning" says Ben Flynn, CEO Geelong Chamber of Commerce.



Aamir is the founder & CEO of Enterprise Monkey (a digital solutions agency), Tech Investor and Co-Founder in 6 startups. Aamir is also the member of Ministerial Advisory Committee to the Minister for Planning in Australia. Aamir was appointed as the General Manager of ICT Geelong (local IT Industry Cluster) at the age of 25. Aamir was the founding Secretary of Pivot Summit - Australia’s largest regional tech conference.

Aamir was brought up in Aligarh city in Uttar Pradesh. He did his Bachelor of Engineering from Aligarh Muslim University in India and immigrated to Australia at the age of 23 to do his MBA from Deakin University.

“I applied for around 150 office jobs but couldn’t get any due to the lack of Australian experience. I used to work as a cleaner at the Avalon Airport and distribute newspapers in midnight to pay for my living and fees.” Aamir says.

In 2012, Aamir got an internship opportunity with ICT Geelong. Impressed with Aamir’s exceptional performance and passion for digital transformation, he was asked by the board to step up as the General Manager of ICT Geelong at the age of 25.



Prior to that Aamir was elected as Gen. Secretary of AMU Students’ Union 2011 (India). As Secretary, Aamir organized the first ever recruitment drive in AMU which resulted in the placement of 2000 students in 30 companies. His passion towards technology contributed in digitization of AMU campus by the introduction of free WiFi and Smart Classrooms. He also developed strong bureaucratic and political connections which empowered him to lobby some National Policies for the welfare of Students.

In 2014, Aamir founded Enterprise Monkey – a web & app solutions company in brother in law’s garage in 2014. “I started with $2000 in savings” says Aamir who led his company to establish in 4 countries with YoY revenue growth of 300% in first 3 years.

Enterprise Monkey has established itself as a leader in web and app space and now growing it’s leadership in Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Internet of Things space. The client list includes NASDAQ listed companies as well as seed stage startups.

Android Creator's Startup Acquires Indian-Origin Email App 'CloudMagic'

Android creator Andy Rubin's consumer technology startup Essential Products has acquired CloudMagic, an Indian -origin startup based out of California and Bangalore, for an undisclosed amount. The news was first reported by LiveMint followed by confirmation from Essential Products' officials.

Founded in 2010, by Rishit Jhunjhunwala and Rohit Nadhani, Cloudmagic is maker of a popular subscription based email app CloudMagic, which has been re-branded to 'Newton' in September 2016.

Interestingly in September this year, CloudMagic had announced that it will be shutting down Newton, marking the end of the subscription-based service after five years. However, in what could be called as a dramatic twist in a tale, Essential Products announced the acquisition within few months after Cloudmagic's decision to pull the plug on Newton app.

The bootstrapped app had claimed to have 40,000 paid subscribers as of April this year.

A statement by an Essential spokesperson says, "We are always on the lookout for companies with great technology and talent to help accelerate our product roadmap."

CloudMagic was born out of another Bengaluru-based startup that was founded by Nadhani and sold earlier this year. CloudMagic was incubated inside Webyog, which built tools for database management, and was spun off as a separate company in 2013.

In April this year, Webyog was acquired by Texas-based business software firm Idera as part of an all-cash deal for an undisclosed amount.

Andrew Rubin also known as Andy Rubin, who is the co-founder and former CEO of Android Inc., acquired by Google in 2005, has started Essential Products in late 2015 and has raised $300 million in funding from investors like Access Technology Ventures, Tencent Holdings, electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn, Redpoint Ventures and Amazon's Alexa fund.

With Essential Products (marketed as Essential), Rubin is currently developing two products, the Android smartphone Essential Phone and Essential Home, which runs Ambient OS, an open source smart home platform by Essential that is aware of the physical layout of your home, the people that live in it.

In August 2017, it was reported that Amazon, Tencent and Foxconn have invested in Essential Products and the company was valued as a unicorn.

Automation Anywhere Raises $300 Mn from Softbank Vision Fund At $2.6 Bn Valuation

Indian-American founded "software bots for enterprises" firm Automation Anywhere has announced that it has raised $300 million from the SoftBank's tech-focused Vision Fund bringing the company's valuation to $2.6 billion.

Based out of California, US, Automation Anywhere had earlier raised $250 million in Series A funding in July and with this fresh funding from Softbank, the company's total financing is now over $500 million.

"With this additional capital, we are in a position to do far more than any other provider. We will not only continue to deliver the most advanced RPA to the market, but we will help bring Artificial Intelligence (AI) to millions," said Mihir Shukla, CEO and Co-Founder at Automation Anywhere.

The latest funding is subject to regulatory approvals and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions and is an expansion to the company's series A round.

Founded in 2003, by Mihir Shukla, Ankur Kothari, Neeti Mehta, and Rushabh Parmani, Automation Anywhere is a provider of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), a technology that refers to use of software robots (bots) to automate business processes that are currently managed manually by human workers.

RPA or 'Software Bots' are digital workers which can complete mundane tasks, and also tackle more complicated problems as well. RPA enables companies to automate business processes, increasing productivity and enabling people to focus on more challenging and fulfilling work.

Automation Anywhere offers a complete suite of products capable of automating business processes at scale.

"Enterprises of all sizes are in the midst of a major transition to digital platforms and we are excited to partner with Automation Anywhere to accelerate this transformation," added Praveen Akkiraju, Managing Partner at Softbank Investment Advisers.

According to Automation Anywhere, it has about 1,500 enterprise customers including General Motors, Mastercard, and LinkedIn. They use its software to automate processes in functions ranging from supply-chain logistics to accounting.

The financing builds on an exceptional year for Automation Anywhere, which saw a rapidly growing roster of marquee customers (some of which can be seen here) and key executive appointments globally.

Following its Series A funding in July, Automation Anywhere announced it has so far this year established nine new locations based in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Miami, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, Toronto, Warsaw and Washington, DC.

These new locations bring the company's total number of global offices to 19, including four others in the US, three in India, and one each in London, Melbourne and Singapore, Automation Anywhere said in a statement on Wednesday.

Automation Anywhere has opened its Bot Store, an app store-like marketplace of downloadable bot applications that are designed by the company and its partner ecosystem to meet specific automation requirements for common business processes. Additionally, the company has also announced that its enterprise solution would soon be available in traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.

Source - ToI, WSJ

[Top Featured Image - Youtube/PEX Network]

Tiger Global Invests $3 Mn in NY-based Checkmate, A Delhi University Alumnus Startup

New York-based Checkmate, which is a platform that helps small & medium sized restaurants to integrate with multiple online ordering plaforms, has closed a $3 million Series A investment round led by Tiger Global Management.

[caption id="attachment_127213" align="alignleft" width="426"] Checkmate Founder & CEO, Vishal Agarwal[/caption]Checkmate is a U.S.-Indian startup founded in 2016 by Vishal Agarwal, a Delhi University alumnus (B.Com - Hons). Checkmate integrates orders coming from various online ordering sources such as UberEats, GrubHub, Caviar, Delivery.com, and Ritual directly to the POS systems, including Brink, Toast, and Revel, among others.

The funding comes within a few weeks after Tiger Global has raised $3.75 billion in its latest venture capital fund named as 'Tiger Global Private Investment Partners XI', touted as one of the largest fundraisings of its kind in 2018.

Initially started as a bill-splitting app, Checkmate currently solves a peculiar problem of restaurants wherein food orders from various online ordering platforms and delivery services are received by restaurants on separate tablets and must be manually entered into the restaurant’s POS system.

With Checkmate, all orders from all platforms are streamlined by automatically confirming and entering into a single POS system – and they print out automatically on the same kitchen printer as the restaurant’s walk-in orders. Checkmate currently works with a number of national restaurant brands, including Five Guys, a fastest growing fast-food chain in the US.

[tnm_video layout="mnmd-post-media"]https://vimeo.com/294409146[/tnm_video]

Checkmate integrates multiple online ordering sources such as UberEats, GrubHub, Caviar, DoorDash, Delivery.com, Ritual and many others directly to restaurant POS systems including Brink, Toast, and Revel at a flat monthly pricing.

Although the platform is not operational for restaurants in India, Checkmate do has its base in India as its operations and tech team of 25 is located in its India office.

Previously working with e-commerce company Choxi.com, Vishal Agarwal, who's also the CEO of Checkmate, plans to utilize the freshly raised funds in doubling down on its R&D, and in particular more platforms for integrations, by using this Series A raise for hiring.

said, “We are very honored to have the backing of Tiger Global Management and believe we can grow rapidly as the volume of online orders is only going to grow, and we can help restaurants massively streamline their orders from these sources at a fixed cost."

“As restaurants streamline their operations to take advantage of rapidly increasing online orders, we expect hundreds of thousands of restaurants to benefit from Checkmate’s unique solution," said Scott Shleifer, Partner, Tiger Global Management.

Source - BusinessWire, TechCrunch

Intel Acquires Indian Entrepreneurs' Startup Netspeed Systems for Chip Design

Intel Corporation has announced the acquisition of NetSpeed Systems, a San Jose, California-based provider of system-on-chip design tools and interconnect fabric intellectual property. The startup was founded by Indian entrepreneurs - Sundari Mitra and Sailesh Kumar, who are both Indian graduates having vast experience with companies in the semiconductor sector.

The NetSpeed team is joining Intel’s Silicon Engineering Group (SEG) led by Jim Keller. Sundari Mitra, NetSpeed co-founder and CEO, will continue to lead her team as an Intel vice president reporting to Keller.

Founded in 2011, by Sundari and Shailesh, NetSpeed provides network-on-chip (NoC) IP to SoC designers. NetSpeed’s NoC tool automates SoC front-end design and generates programmable, synthesizable high-performance and efficient interconnect fabrics.

Interestingly, both Sundari and Shailesh have had earlier worked for Intel Coporation before starting their entrepreneurial journey in semiconductor space.

NetSpeed Systems raised a total of $13.2 million in funding over 3 rounds. It counts Intel Capital, Walden Riverwood Ventures and SK hynix, among its investors. As of now it is unclear how Walden and hynix would make exits from this acquisition.

“NetSpeed’s highly configurable and synthesizable offerings will help Intel more quickly and cost-effectively design, develop and test new SoCs with an ever-increasing set of IP,” Intel said in a statement.

As SoCs grow more complex and as new fabrication processes explode the number of design rules, architects are increasingly utilizing front-end tools like NetSpeed’s to automate the design and validation process — saving time and money. NetSpeed’s technology helps architects estimate and optimize SoC performance in advance of manufacturing through a system-level approach, user-driven automation and state-of-the-art algorithms.

“Intel is designing more products with more specialized features than ever before, which is incredibly exciting for Intel architects and for our customers. The challenge is synthesizing a broader set of IP blocks for optimal performance while reining in design time and cost. NetSpeed’s proven network-on-chip technology addresses this challenge, and we’re excited to now have their IP and expertise in-house,” said Jim Keller, senior vice president and general manager of the Silicon Engineering Group at Intel.

Founders

[caption id="attachment_126145" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Sundari Mitra, NetSpeed Systems co-Founder and CEO, is photographed with Jim Keller, Intel senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Silicon Engineering Group.(Credit: Intel Corporation)[/caption]

Sundari Mitra - Sundari, who holds a MSEE from the University of Illinois and a BSEE from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara in India, is a serial entrepreneur who had earlier founded Prism Circuits, Inc. and served as its CEO from 2006 until its acquisition by MoSys in 2009. She then served as Executive VP Engineering at MoSys where she was responsible for its engineering operations and product development until 2011.

Prior to starting Prism, Sundari served as a Director of Engineering at Sun Microsystems and also as design Engineer at Intel.

Sailesh Kumar - Shailesh is an Electrical Engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, and has conceptualized and developed several high impact technologies across multiple industries, such as Content Aware Networks at Cisco Systems, Smart Memory the 100G service network processor at Huawei Technologies, and software defined NoC at NetSpeed Systems.

Sailesh is also the author of more than 20 technical papers published by top journals and conferences. He also holds a PhD in Computer Science from Washington University.

“Intel has been a great customer of NetSpeed’s, and I’m thrilled to once again be joining the company,” said Sundari Mitra.

“Intel is world class at designing and optimizing the performance of custom silicon at scale. As part of Intel’s Silicon Engineering Group, we’re excited to help invent new products that will be a foundation for computing’s future,” she added.

“Intel expects to honor NetSpeed’s existing customer contracts, but NetSpeed will become an internal asset going forward,” the company said in a statement.

[Top Featured Image - NetSpeed Systems team | Credit - Intel Corporation]

IIT-Delhi Alumni Startup Bidgely ('बीजली') Raises $27 Mn In A Largest Round for Energy Disaggregation Tech

California, US-based late-stage startup Bidgely (aka 'Electricity' in hindi), that has its office in Bangalore, has announced today that it has closed a $27 million Series C round of funding -- the largest round of investment to date for energy disaggregation technology.

The funding round was led by Georgian Partners along with participation of existing investors including Innogy, E.ON, and Khosla Ventures.

Founded in 2011 by Indian Institutes of Technology, Delhi alumni, CEO Abhay Gupta and CTO Vivek Garud, Bidgely is a disruptive technology startup developing an energy monitoring and management solution for eco-friendly energy saving. The startup out at Silicon Valley’s Plug-and-Play incubator, and the high-growth energytech startup is now leading the way in the convergence of AI and energy use.

Bidgely had earlier raised its Series A funding in 2013 followed by the Series B round that took place in 2015. Till date, the total capital raised by the company stand at $51 million.

The company currently has offices in Mountain View, California, Bangalore, India and the Netherlands.

Georgian Partners, an investment fund known for its focus on high-growth enterprise software companies that use applied artificial intelligence to disrupt markets, led the oversubscribed round.

"We invest in high-growth SaaS companies that are applying AI to solve real-world business problems,” said Simon Chong, Managing Partner at Georgian Partners. “Bidgely is using machine learning to fundamentally reinvent customer engagement with utilities and enable a new class of business analytics. We believe that they’re at the forefront of innovation in the energy space and are excited to partner with them as they continue their important work.”

Over the last 12 months, the significant milestones Bidgely has achieved include -- Reaching 10 million homes under contract with 25 utilities globally and launching the third generation of its disaggregation platform.

"Bidgely started its India office in early 2014 and today the Bangalore team is playing a central role in the company's growth,” said Bidgely CEO, Abhay Gupta. “Our core products and innovations are being developed from our India office and the new funds will be used to continue to attract top talent to fuel our growth. We plan to expand our Bangalore office to over 200 engineers in the next twelve to eighteen months.”

This round of funding will be used to accelerate Bidgely’s growth in three areas:

• Expanding Bangalore office with dedicated engineers and data scientists to deepen Bidgely’s already strong disaggregation technology


• Accelerating growth in Europe and Asia by expanding local sales and customer success teams.


• Expanding beyond consumer facing engagement to business intelligence applied to broader decision making within utilities

More Indian-Orgin Founders' Startups

In May 2017, Improbable, an another Indian-origin founder's startup raised funding in an UK's biggest venture capital round led by Softbank.

In August 2017, Google acquired Senosis Health which is a health monitoring startup co-founded by Indian-origin Professor Shwetak Patel. In the same month, Softbank invested whopping $1 billion in an Indian origin entrepreneur’s BioTech Startup.

In 2016, Google had acquired an another Indian-Origin tech startup called Synergize.

Airbnb is Buying A Startup Founded by 3 Indian Origin Entrepreneurs

California-based online lodging service firm AirBnB, from whom India's Oyo copied the business model, is on verge of buying an another California-based background-check startup -- Trooly, founded by three Indian-origin entrepreneurs in 2014 as it seeks to protect its users and hosts from undesirable and fraudulent people. Notably, Airbnb has reportedly been a Trooly customer since 2015.

A report in Fortune magazine said Airbnb is buying Trooly, a small startup that specializes in technology that helps conduct background checks.

Founded in 2014 by Anish Das Sarma, Savi Baveja and Nilesh Dalvi, Trooly uses machine learning technology to verify, screen and predict trustworthy relationships and interactions for businesses. The startup had raised $10 million in funding in 2016, according to venture capital tracking site Crunchbase.

Savi Baveja, who is also the company’s CEO, had previously served as senior partner at the strategy consulting firm Bain & Company, and a member of the Bain Board of Directors.

Anish Das Sarma, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, is a gold medalist from IIT-Bombay and has worked at Google Research and Yahoo Research. Nilesh Dalvi, Trooly's Chief Science Officer, is too an IIT-Bombay alumnus and has worked at Facebook and Yahoo Research.

"We look forward to welcoming the Trooly team to Airbnb in the coming weeks,” the Airbnb spokesperson said. "We'll continue working together to better facilitate trust between strangers on, off and across the platform – supporting Airbnb’s overall strategy to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere."

This Indian Origin Entrepreneur Led Startup Is Riding $2.2 Trillion Pipeline

We often are so much set in are own ways that we resist any kind of change. Same is the case with various old process, traditions and rituals that we still follow, without questioning anything about its existence and working. Karthik Sridharan of Kinnek is not one of those. He's an excellent example of an entrepreneur who takes an ancient business problem and solves it simply using modern technology at his disposal.

In year 2012, Karthik along with Rui Ma founded Kinnek, a B2B platform that allows small businesses to request and receive customized quotes from suppliers for their purchases.. The startup which has been making waves since beginning, and recently made $20 million in Series B funding round led by Thrive Capital . It Series A funding, which closed about a year ago, was led by Matrix Partners and raised a total of $33 million.

The small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) end up spending about $2.2 trillion annually on supplies and equipment. Kinnek helps these businesses in procurement of goods and equipments. The platform receives roughly about $1 billion in quotes per year. Further, more than 20,000 businesses make use of the startup's services on the buy side and about 2,000 suppliers.

Kinnek is a perfect marketplace for business owners and purchasers. Typically they approach the marketplace with their needs, and then the vendors respond to them with a quote. The platform charges the sellers, in a hybrid based model, which is part subscription fee and part commission on sales. The service is absolutely free of cost for the buyers.

[caption id="attachment_102846" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Karthik Sridharan (left) and his Kinnek co-founder Rui Ma[/caption]

As many as 20,000 businesses use Kinnek on the buy side (up from 10,000 a year ago), and about 2,000 suppliers. And according to a recent TechCrunch article, Kinnek is the only one of four similar platforms that hasn’t limited itself to one industry vertical.

According to Sridharan, SMBs are continuously looking for customized goods and equipments but many of them cannot afford to have dedicated procurement teams like a big business. This is where Kinnek comes to their rescue.

With $20 million in their kitty, the company already has plans ready to use the money for two areas: firstly, they plan to expand their offerings into new industries; and secondly, they are considering adding up more features like invoicing, shipping and receiving. The ultimate goal is to make Kinnek the social graph of businesses, akin to Facebook and LinkedIn.