Persistent Systems Acquires Web Discovery Startup Hoopz

IT solutions and product firm Persistent Systems has acquired Pune-based startup Hoopz for an undisclosed amount.

Founded by Akash Surekha in 2011 Hoopz is in the web discovery technology space. Hoopz patent pending technology enables auto discovery of information and content like blogs, web, articles, news, books, music, audio, video, maps, etc from across the planet based on keywords of user communications (sms, mms, email, social networking, instant messaging) and content consumption (web, books, search engine, digital information, audio , video) on any kind of device like phone, smartphone, pc, etc. in real time based on their needs and context.

Hoopz helps all content and information providers to enable delivery of their contents and informations in automated fashion without requiring consumer to do manual search via Hoopz auto discovery platform.

“We realised that the web experience on the smartphones is very fragmented. Especially, when you are searching something. Our technology allows you to move away from world of manual search to auto discovery based on consumer context and needs,” said Akash Surekha, who will now joins Persistent as the part of deal.

With the acquisition, Hoopz will focus on international expansion into regions like APAC and China.

“We did have the option to invest in the company through our venture arm too, but the technology and space that Hoopz is made us believe that acquiring them would be better,” said Anand Deshpande, chairman and MD, Persistent Systems.

Deshpande also explained that though as of now Hoopz is into consumer internet space but goind forward it can be scaled into the enterprise set-up too.

“Our objective is to align technology and the company. We keep looking at technologies and see how we can participate in them. This also means taking smaller companies to a bigger core group,” he added.

At present Hoopz is used on over half-a-million handsets.

In the last three years, the company has acquired eight firms. Last year it had acquired CloudSquads, a US-based enterprise social apps platform provider.