Accenture Acquires Bengaluru Based AI And Analytics Startup BRIDGEi2i

Accenture has entered into an agreement to acquire Bengaluru-based AI and analytics firm BRIDGEi2i. With the acquisition, Accenture will add 800 BRIDGEi2i employees to its Applied Intelligence team.  

Founded in 2011 by Prithvijit Roy, Ashish Sharma and Pritam Kanti Paul, the Bengaluru-based startup with offices in the US and Australia offers services like data engineering, advanced analytics, AI accelerators and consulting services. 

It offers analytics and decision support solutions across marketing, sales, supply chain, pricing and risk management verticals for corporations across industries. Edelweiss private equity had acquired a minority stake in BRIDGEi2i in 2016 by investing an undisclosed amount in the startup’s Pre-Series A round of funding.

“The digital enterprise of the future is being reimagined today with AI. At BRIDGEi2i, we believe in diving into the heart of business challenges and driving transformation in its truest sense for our clients by combining our AI capabilities with our digital consulting expertise,” said Prithvijit Roy, CEO and cofounder of BRIDGEi2i

Accenture is an Ireland-based multinational corporation that specialises in IT services and consulting. It employs over half a million people around the world and reported revenues of $44.3 Bn in 2020. Around 150,000 of those employees are based out of India.

Applied Intelligence is Accenture’s service that scales AI by embedding AI-powered data, analytics and automation capabilities into business workflows. 

Before this, Accenture acquired Australian company Analytics8, spanish company Pragsis Bidoop, UK-based Mudano, Indian company Byte Prophecy, French company Sentelis and American companies Clarity Insights, End-To-End Analytics and Core Compete to augment its growing analytics, data and AI business.

“In this rapidly evolving space, constantly building new capabilities is key, and we believe that BRIDGEi2i will further enhance our AI skills and data science capabilities”, said Sanjeev Vohra, global lead for Accenture Applied Intelligence. 

Indian tech giants aren’t far behind in acquiring startups to contribute to their portfolio. Many Indian conglomerates have been battling it out, competing over acquisitions to increase their own offerings, adding innovative models & technologies and to enter new sectors. 

Earlier this year, Reliance Retail beat out Tata Group to acquire retail services company Justdial. Reliance Retail had earlier acquired Netmeds and Urban Ladder. Reliance Retail’s parent company Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), has been on an acquisition spree where it invested in more than a hundred companies in the last five years.

Many other multinational corporations have partaken in acquiring Indian companies. Back in 2014, Facebook acquired Bengaluru-based Little Eye Labs. The startup builds performance analysis and monitoring tools for android apps. 

In 2017, Google acquired Bengaluru-based Halli Labs to leverage the startup’s AI and Machine Learning technologies. In 2018, Google acquired Bengaluru-based Sigmoid Labs to add the startup’s “Where is my train” app’s functionality to Google Maps.

Google will be eyeing a bigger piece of the Indian startup ecosystem in the coming years with its $10 Bn digitization fund.