You might say the week is never really done in startup and technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Report on Inc42, a quick peek back at the Top Funding bids and Acquisitions for the past seven days – all handpicked.
Scroll down through the break and enjoy!
1. Yahoo on an Acquisition Spree
Yahoo was on an acquisition spree this week acquiring GoPollGo, Milewise and Loki Studios.
GoPollGo is a real-time polling tool that lets brands and media properties collect and analyze feedback. Yahoo has been trying to find ways to keep users interested in its content and more engaged, the current buzzword for the digital ad industry. This will surely be the right step in that direction Milewise specializes in helping serious travelers choose the cheapest flights, not just based on price, but also with frequent flyer mile discounts factored in. The startup could bring know-how for helping Yahoo differentiate its travel.yahoo.com site from competitors as it focuses on the small screen.
Loki studios is a mobile gaming company that develops location and environment-aware smartphone games, starting with their flagship monster battle game, Geomon. It’s not clear whether Yahoo will actually be doing anything with Loki’s technology but it seems, Yahoo aims to incorporate data about the user’s location into its various mobile games.
2. Twitter Acquires Scalable Computing Startup ‘Ubalo’
It seems that Twitter isn’t done snapping up startups just yet. This Thursday, it acquired a little known scalable computing startup ‘Ubalo’.
Ubalo, launched in 2011, describes itself as a simpler way to deal with large-scale computing: “We hide the details of the computers, environments, and messaging, so our users can worry much less about integration and scaling and instead write just the code they need for their analysis or processing.”
Twitter hopes that the team from Ubalo will help refine the incredibly popular service’s infrastructure.
3. Facebook to buy social GPS app maker Waze for up to $1 billion
Facebook is in the final stages of negotiation with crowd-sourced traffic and navigation app maker Waze for an Instagram-sized acquisition.
Waze is a social traffic and navigation app that is based on a large community of tens of millions of drivers around the world sharing real-time road info and more to everyone else’s benefit.
Facebook has been making acquisitions left and right to beef up its portfolio of products, hire mobile development and user experience talent and stay ahead of the curve. This is just one of them.
4. Wipro to invest $30 mn for Minority Stake in US Based Opera Solutions
India’s third largest IT services company Wipro is investing $30 million in Opera Solutions LLC, a big data company based in New Jersey.
Opera Solutions has built platforms that extract threat and other sentiment from open source online data, as well as other solutions for financial services, capital markets, procurement professionals, and the healthcare industry.
5. BharatMatrimony Owner Hives Off Real Estate Portal IndiaProperty.com & Raises $7 Mn
Consim Info, the owners of a chain of matrimony websites including Bharatmatrimony.com, has hived off Indiaproperty.com, its real estate portal and raised $7 million risk capital from Canaan Partners and Mayfield Fund.
It is rumored that Consim Info is planning an IPO in the near future. Consim Info’s previous attempt a $125 mn IPO was differed due to tough market conditions.
6. Box Acquires Crocodoc
Cloud storage company Box has acquired HTML5 document embedding service and Y Combinator alum ‘Crocodoc’.
Crocodoc allows you to upload a PDF, and receive a version of the same document in your browser, which you could then share with coworkers and annotate with notes, highlighting, text, and a pen tool, with changes that show up to other users in real time.
Box aims to add HTML5 Document Converter and sleek content viewing experience to its cloud storage platform.
7. Mumbai Angels Invests Rs 5 cr in Online Apparel Retailer Yoga Smoga
Angel network Mumbai Angels has invested in Yoga Smoga, a yoga-inspired athletic apparel and accessories company.
Yoga Smoga has developed a high technology fabric, Aurum+, that is a mix of Supplex, a synthetic fabric that is stretchable and fast-drying, and Lycra. The company also uses nano technology to ensure moisture management.
The Angel network’s previous international investments include Screampoint, NetElixir, Exclusively.in.
8. SEBI approves Startup Village Angel Fund
In a major fillip to Kochi based-Startup Village, India’s first telecom incubator, market regulator SEBI has approved the Startup Village angel fund to the tune of 10 million US dollars that could go up to 20 million dollars with a ‘Green Shoe’ (over-allotment) option. The angel fund will be investing not only in the most promising start-ups located in Startup Village but also in similar enterprises across the country.
It will act like a shot in the arm for Startup Village, which would become the first incubator in India to have its own in-house fund. It will help the Internet-Telecom incubator to get the most conducive ecosystem for product start-ups.
9. Dell forays into cloud computing, acquires Enstratius
For months now, Dell was trying to go private. The intention was to bring company’s focus from being a niche PC maker to a more enterprise company. To back this intention, Dell has acquired Enstratius, an enterprise cloud management provider which delivers single and multi-cloud management capabilities.
Enstratius, is a leading cloud management startup which was listed as ‘most innovative startup’ by Gartner in 2011. With Dell adding Enstratius on-board, the company has taken a crucial step to provide end-to-end cloud solutions.
10. Business Intelligence Startup Helical IT Raises Seed Funding
Helical IT Solutions has announced that it has raised a seed funding of Rs. 2.5 million from a Singapore based Citibank official.
Helical IT Solutions provides consulting services and support for an end-to-end custom Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence solution based upon business requirements.
The company aims to use the funds to hire aggressively and foster partnerships in the open source domain and build up their capability of offering sector wise BI services.
Hope you enjoyed this edition of ‘The Weekly Report : Funding and Acquisitions around the globe’. See you until the next weekend!
