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Symphony services today announced the acquisition of Core Objects, an US based outsourced product development firm which has offices in Bangalore and Pune. With this acquisiton Symphony services plans to expand its offering in niche product development space and also in embedded technology field.

The acquisition also provides Symphony Services with access to additional re-usable components and frameworks for product development, including CoreObjects’ Smart Objects’ suite of software assets designed to speed clients’ products to market and create long-term, high-margin recurring revenue. The Smart Objects suite includes Smart Machines, a Web-based solution for real-time asset performance management, enabling continuous monitoring and management of industrial equipment; and smart vitals, an early response system to improve patient safety and optimise occupancy in hospitals.

CoreObjectss have clients all across US, Europe and India, CoreObjects have also helped startups and SMEs to to build new products or revamping existing ones. The company’s vertical market expertise includes automotive; industrial automation; semiconductor manufacturing; media and entertainment; health and wellness; financial services; mobile applications; life sciences; and medical devices, networking and clean tech and energy.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Ericsson has acquired a minority stake in Novatium Solutions Private Ltd. with an aim to speed up the broadband enabled user services in emerging economies. Novatium launched its commercial service in November 2009 and has 40 employees in its Chennai office and 35 employees in the field throughout India. Novatium offers a PC together with cloud-based services via telecom operators gives Ericsson exciting opportunity to support an innovative local business in a fast growing market that will further increase the need of mobile broadband

Via agreements with various software companies, Novatium offers a PC together with cloud-based services through telecom operators and distributors’ network, where the consumer buys his or her choice of a service-package, for example anti-virus, photo editing or office programs, as a thin client on a monthly basis. Primarily, this service addresses the needs of first-time Internet and PC users, both from simplicity as well as from an affordability perspective.

With Ericsson acquiring a minority stake in Novatium, the company will have funding and competence to further develop the offering and grow outside India in markets with similar needs. For Ericsson the agreement offers an exciting opportunity to support an innovative local business in a fast growing market that will further increase the need of mobile broadband.

Acknowledging the importance of cloud based services, Gowton Achaibar, head of Region India, Ericsson, said, “The business concept PC as-a-service is a strong offering addressing an important growing segment in the Indian market. With this engagement I see potential business synergy benefits to both Novatium and Ericsson and our respective customers.”

Alok Singh, CEO Novatium Solutions Pvt. Ltd. said, “This strategic relationship with Ericsson encompasses a great opportunity for Novatium as we are partnering with a global organization with the best technology know-how, which will help us develop our offering and introduce it to new markets.”

The middle income consumers and the first time PC owners are the primary contributors to the growth of PC usage in India, while connectivity to internet and cloud based services are important enablers.

The PC-as-a-service with cloud environment also brings a business opportunity to the telecom operators as it provides differentiated broadband pricing based on what services the consumer wants to have access to. This not only allows operators to increase their revenues from a service revenue share but also increases the addressable broadband market by lowering consumers’ entry barriers with affordable PC’s and related services.

Novatium has contracts with some of the major Indian telecom operators like Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), Bharti Airtel and TATA.

Immense hectic activity going on in the group discount space in India. Some new group discount portals like lootmore.com have sprung up with sole intention of getting acquired, portals like Taggle and Snapdeal have able to raise Venture Capital and some players like Grabbon have merged themselves with bigger player Snapdeal.

Coming days you may witness further consolidation is this space. There is a strong buzz in the market that one of the prominent player from NCR in group discount space going to be acquired by bigger player or it could be an internet company interested in getting a pie in this group discount space.

Lets look at their monthly traction wrt unique visitors -

In my view Mydala and koovs are doing extremely well in terms of cracking number of deals and also the size of deal. I had a word with Anisha Singh CEO of mydala and as per her most of their deals are above 500 bucks and sells well which implies more margin for mydala. I had chat with Manish Tewari of Koovs and as per him most of Koovs deal are below 300 bucks and they offer maximum discount on the original value, clearly they are targeting the lower base of pyramid.

Lets wait and watch this space.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

AppLabs announced that it has acquired, Hyderabad based ValueMinds, the developer of TestersDesk.com(TM), a set of tools for test data generation and automated test case creation.

Post this acquisition, AppLabs will continue to support TestersDesk.com(TM) as a free community based tool for test design and test data generation for quality and testing professionals globally.

Commenting on the acquisition, Sashi Reddi, Founder and Chairman of AppLabs said “ValueMinds would bring to the table not only some key customized tools like WS TestersDesk – a test case generator for SOA/web services and Record Generator – a test data creator for databases and performance testing, but will also demonstrate AppLabs’ thought leadership in community driven testing activities” .

With the acquisition, Ashwin Palaparthi, Founder/Chief Architect of ValueMinds will join AppLabs as the Vice President, Innovation and will run several key initiatives of the company such as its Centers of Excellence in test automation, performance testing, and security testing.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Truly old is gold, this old saying comes alive when i came to know of Lycos acquisition. I was totally unaware of the fact that Lycos existed, very emotional connect with Lycos since I created my very first email id on it.

Ybrant Digital, the end-to-end provider of digital marketing solutions, on Monday  to acquire Lycos Inc for $36M, the leading brand of search based internet properties and services, from Daum Communications of Korea.

Lycos consistently averages 12-15 million monthly unique visitors in the US, and is a top 25 Internet destination worldwide, reaching nearly 60 million unique visitors globally.

“Brand Lycos needs no introduction, we are excited to bring in the Lycos properties into our fold,” Chairman and CEO, Ybrant Digital, Suresh Reddy said.

“The quality of content and tools offered by Lycos has always attracted the best of the consumers across the world. Our goal is to combine the benefits of Ybrant’s global network with what Lycos has to offer in creating a compelling global destination for our advertising clients worldwide. Coupled with our offerings for advertisers, we do present new products to our local users worldwide,” he said.

“As a result of the sale of Lycos, Daum will be able to devote its energy and corporate resources to core domestic businesses including search, mobile services and map,” William Chao, CEO of Daum Communications Corp, said.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

TenCube, the maker of WaveSecure, a leading mobile security service that safeguards smartphones in case of loss or theft has been acquired by McAfee in an undisclosed sum. TenCube is headquartered in Singapore and has an engineering center in Noida.

WaveSecure ensures mobile data protection, and enhances the possibility of recovering devices. With the WaveSecure service, which supports Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian devices, consumers can locate a missing mobile device, lock the smartphone to prevent unauthorized use or access to data, and remotely wipe all data from the device.

The acquisition will enable McAfee to further extend its leadership in the mobile security market by offering consumers a complete and secure way to stay in control of mobile devices and data.

The WaveSecure service not only eases the stress and hassle that comes when a cell phone is lost or stolen, but also provides critical protection for the data that resides on the device. With WaveSecure automatic data backup, users ensure that all information on the cell phone is recoverable and accessible online. Additionally, the WaveSecure service can remotely locate a misplaced device and display a message on its screen that explains how to return the phone to its owner, increasing the chances that a lost device will be recovered.

We will try reaching out to Rishi Israni, Cofounder of TenCube to share more details on this deal.

Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Immense mind boggling  activity in the social buying segment taking place in India. Groupon, the American giant is valued close to a billion dollars. A couple of smaller Indian players have sold out. A few have grown bigger and better. Their margins have grown stronger, touching the 30′s, than what I earlier predicted. Funding has come to a few and others are on the negotiating table. This sector is up for a lot of action in the next 6 months.

Some amount of consolidation taking place in group discount space after emerging in mushroom fashion 7-8 months back. Snapdeal, a group discount site promoted by Delhi based Jasper Infotech has acquired Bangalore based Grabbon, deal value has not been disclosed and it is termed as strategic acquisition by both Snapdeal and Grabbon.

Interestingly Grabbon is the 1st Groupon clone to hit the Indian market and founded by Tony Navin, Jackson Fernandez and Balamurugan all XLRI graduates. Few weeks back i interviewed Jackson, you may check here.

Benefit for Snapdeal from this acquisition- :

• Seasoned management guys who know the nitty gritty of discount space and have executed this model quite diligently.
• Getting Bangalore as a market where Snapdeal has no presence and being tech savvy metro, this model brings lot of value and readymade market for them by acquiring Grabbon.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Leading Indian digital media network Komli Media, announced its acquisition of PostClick, Australia’s leading premium website representation firm, this week. Together the company now reaches over 30 million unique audiences across Asia to become the leading digital media network platform in the region, according to a press statement.

Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Sydney with offices across Melbourne and Singapore, PostClick represents Bloomberg and Hotfrog among other premium websites. Headquarted in Mumbai, Komli Media partners exclusively with top global publishers including Facebook, Expedia and Miniclip in India. The network also has offices in New York, Toronto, Palo Alto and New Delhi.

Andrew Lockwood will continue as managing director of PostClick as it becomes a division of Komli Media.

“We are extremely excited to partner with PostClick to expand our presence in the Australian and Southeast Asian markets and bring Komli Media’s industry leading solutions to new advertiser and publisher partners,” said Amar Goel, Komli Media founder and CEO.

Performance products under the expanded online media network include premium brand solutions, performance marketing and audience measurement. “Komli Media has been at the forefront of bringing leading solutions to the digital ecosystem and we are thrilled to be part of the Komli Media team,” said Andrew Lockwood, founder and MD of PostClick. “We are confident that joining forces with Komli Media will help us deliver more value to our partners and grow our foot print across Australia and Southeast Asia.”

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

NetCore Solutions has acquired  web portal OneIndia and online classifieds portal Click, both are properties of Greynium Information Technologies.   NetCore’s founder and managing director, Rajesh Jain, had earlier invested in Greynium through his personal venture capital fund Emergic Venture Capital. However the terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Interestingly both the portals have good traction which would have been a driving force behind this acquisition.

Monthly traction at OneIndia

Worldwide Unique visitors (cookies) 7.3M Unique visitors (users) 3.5M Reach 0.2% Page views 62M Total visits 12M Avg visits per visitor 2.2 Avg time on site 6:00

3.5M unique visitiors is pretty good and more importantly average time on site is 6mins which means they have sticky content keeping users engaged. With 7.3M they must be minting atleast 8-10Lacs from the Advertising.

Monthly traction at Click.in

Worldwide
Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	350K
Unique visitors (users)	430K
Reach	0.0%
Page views	2.6M
Total visits	510K
Avg visits per visitor	1.2
Avg time on site	6:20

In the current scenarios portal having good traction has various options to monetize. Earlier I have covered How Traction can lead it to IPO, check out here.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com