Gurguram Based Used Car Retailing Platform Spinny Acquires its Mumbai Based Rival Truebil

With the onset of COVID-19, an unprecedented global crisis, a lot of industries are seeing a significant reduction in customer demand, whereas the used car market has gained momentum globally due to a change in personal transport preferences in a COVID impacted the world. The effect can also be seen in the context of the Indian used car market witnessing consolidation and rapid growth among players. In the most recent development, Spinny - Gurugram headquartered full stack used car platform - has acquired rival Truebil - Mumbai headquartered. Truebil operated a C2C managed used car marketplace along with a full-stack direct retail program as Truebil Direct. Truebil served in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi NCR, and was clocking INR 250 Cr+ in annual sales before the COVID outbreak. Truebil was founded in early 2015 by IIT Kharagpur and IIT Bombay alumni Suraj Kalwani, Ravi Chirania, Shubh Bansal, Rakesh Raman, and Ritesh Pandey. Through its journey, Truebil managed to raise a total of USD 24 Mn in funding, including USD 4 Mn in debt funding. Its major institutional investors include Kalaari Capital (India), Shunwei Capital (China & India), Kae Capital (India), Inventus Capital (US & India), and Spiral Ventures (Japan & Singapore) and in early 2019, Truebil had closed its Series B round of funding.

Gurugram headquartered Spinny currently offers its services across Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune. Spinny, which operates through a full-stack online-to-offline retail platform model, has seen significant tailwind in its business post-COVID-19 outbreak. Spinny initially started in mid-2015 through the C2C managed marketplace model, in mid-2017, it pivoted entirely to its current full-stack platform model after realizing the need to control the entire value chain to provide the best quality and a premium experience to its customers. During March 2020, Spinny announced the completion of a USD 43 Mn+ series B round led by Nandan Nilekani's venture fund The Fundamentum Partnership: the round saw participation from existing investors Accel and SAIF Partners. Accel and SAIF Partners had co-led the company's USD 13 Mn+ Series A round in April 2019. The latest Series B round of Spinny also saw participation from other new investors which include US-based General Catalyst and South Korea based KB Group, other than the lead investor Fundamentum. Blume Ventures led Spinny’s seed round along with Russia's Simile Ventures. Many angel investors, along with the IAN group investors, were provided exit by the company during its Series A round of funding last year.

While both Spinny and Truebil have refrained from commenting on the commercials and exact details of the deal, Truebil's Co-founder and CEO Suraj Kalwani did share his experience of building Truebil and the reasons behind his decision of selling out the company to Spinny. "At Truebil, we have built a technology-driven retail platform enabling trust and seamless consumer experience for used car buyers. Truebil thrived in building consumer-centric products aided by technology and data science, helping consumers make objective decisions in their used car purchase. We were operating across three major cities in India and our endeavor to scale our services across the country; we were excited to share a similar vision as Niraj and team at Spinny. We realized that by augmenting each other's capabilities, we could accelerate towards building the country's largest and the most trusted used car brand". Spinny's Co-Founder and CEO Niraj Singh said, "We like and respect the capabilities Suraj and his team have built at Truebil and find certain merit in that for Spinny, so this deal was a natural move for us. But given Spinny is still in its early days, we will let the Truebil platform keep operating as an independent brand for now. We will reassess merging within the Spinny brand umbrella after some time."

With this acquisition, Spinny becomes the only used car startup in India that follows a full-stack retail platform model and operates on the organized side of the market. Other peers like Cars24, CarDekho, OLX, etc. provide their services mostly in the unorganized classifieds and dealer ecosystems side of the market. Commenting on Spinny’s plans, Niraj further added that building capabilities for best in class quality and customer experience has always been our top focus area. We will keep doubling down on our efforts there. Meanwhile, we will also keep going deeper into our existing markets and soon activate a few more markets.

Looking at how similar modeled players have performed across the globe, the used car market is poised to grow and emerge stronger than before from the COVID crisis. US-based online used car player - Carvana’s stock price has seen a 5x jump this quarter to an all-time high value. Not only existing listed players are reaping the benefits of these tailwinds, but also new stock market entrants are making the most of the situation. Another similarly modeled player, Vroom (US), entered the public markets in Jun’20 and saw a massive interest, so much so that it overshot its initial raise plans by ~4.5x. Its valuation almost doubled on the day of the IPO. Looking at the public market performance of such companies in the US, investors have taken an eye out for similar players across global markets. UK based Cazoo announced a new funding round that values the company at over a billion dollars, making it the latest startup to attain unicorn status in this segment and making Cazoo the fastest unicorn in the UK.

About Spinny

Spinny is a full-stack car-buying platform for the young Indian, enabling a car buying experience that is simple and delightful. Though in the early stages, Spinny has been appreciated by its customers with an above 4.5 out of 5 ratings from Spinny car owners – and a 78% NPS and 35% referral purchases. Headquartered in Gurgaon, Spinny employs over 500 people across 6 cities India.

https://www.spinny.com/home-test-drive/

An IIT-Delhi alumnus, Niraj Singh (Founder & CEO) is a serial entrepreneur and investor. Spinny was born out of his desire to deal with a core area that directly addresses the customer’s challenge; in this case a car. He noticed the absence of a platform that offers a completely trustworthy and premium experience to people purchasing second-hand cars, even though they are spending a significant amount and the purchase being a very aspirational one for them. He was determined to solve this problem by eradicating the distrust and making the process simple and straightforward for the customer.

Google enters mobile advertising space with AdMob acquisition

In a push to expand its digital advertising empire to cellphones, Google has agreed to acquire AdMob, a fast-growing mobile advertising start-up, for $750 million in stock, the companies said.

AdMob is one of the top sellers of banner ads on iPhone applications and Web pages that can be retrieved from mobile phones. The acquisition could help establish Google as an early leader in the small but rapidly expanding mobile phone advertising business.

The deal shows that Google is serious about becoming a major player in the mobile advertising ecosystem, said Neil Strother, an analyst with Forrester Research. It puts Google in the front-runner position.Strother and other analysts said that position could prove tenuous. The mobile advertising business, which has long been hailed as the next big thing, remains embryonic.

Agencies

Is Xerox set to acquire ACS for $6.4 in 2009?

Xerox, the global copier and imaging giant, will pay $6.4 billion to acquire the outsourcing company Affiliated Computer Services, expanding its foothold in a growing industry, the companies said.

Xerox, based in Norwalk, Conn, is paying $63.11 a share in cash and stock for ACS, which posted revenue growth of 6% and new business signings of $1 billion in annual recurring revenue during its fiscal 2009.

“We’re creating a new class of solution provider,” Xerox’s chief executive, Ursula M Burns, said in a statement, adding that the deal was “a gamechanger for Xerox.” She estimated the company’s revenue from services would triple to $10 billion next year from $3.5 billion in 2008. Lynn R Blodgett, ACS’s chief executive, said in the statement that the deal was necessary “to expand globally and differentiate our offerings through technology.” ACS will continue to operate as an independent organization. Blodgett will remain as chief executive, reporting to Burns.
It was the first major deal for Burns, who took over Xerox in July with the retirement of Anne M Mulcahy.

Owners of ACS stock will receive $18.60 a share in cash and 4.935 Xerox shares for each ACS share. Xerox will assume $2 billion in ACS debt and issue $300 million of convertible preferred stock to ACS’s Class B shareholders. ACS had a market value Friday at the close of trading of $4.6 billion. Xerox said the transaction would add to profit in the first year on an adjusted-earnings basis.

ACS, based in Dallas, specializes in outsourcing processes for industries including telecommunications, retail and financial services and health care, and describes itself as the largest provider of managed services to government entities in the United States. The companies estimated the market for so-called business process outsourcing at $150 billion, growing at a rate of 5% a year.

JP Morgan Chase and Blackstone Advisory Partners acted as financial adviser to Xerox, while Citigroup Global Markets served as financial adviser to ACS

Agencies

Is Intel set to acquire two software firms?

Intel has quietly snapped up two software companies in the last 30 days with aim of boosting development of applications that take better advantage of chips with more than one processing core.

In a company blog, the chipmaker indicated the acquisition of Cilk at the end of last month and then Rapidmind earlier this week. Both are small companies that employ under than 50 people. The acquisitions follow the purchase of software company Wind River Systems in June.

"Over the last few years, there has been a gradual emergence of multicore microprocessors. It's put parallelism in more and more machines," James Reinders, chief evangelist and director of marketing and sales at Intel, said in a phone interview Friday, explaining why Intel bought the two firms.

"If you look at traditional applications, ones that we use everyday, it's fair to say that most are not exploiting parallelism--at least not to the full extent," Reinders said.

A multicore processor is defined as any chip with more than one processing core. Today, almost all Intel chips that go into laptops, desktops, and servers have at least two cores. The challenge for Intel is to make sure that applications take advantage of all the cores--so-called parallelism. This has historically presented a challenge for software programmers.

"The operating system does stuff for applications in parallel," Reinders said, referring to operating systems such as Windows. "But considering that we can produce more and more cores every year, to truly get the benefit of what the future holds, applications need to change. And most applications haven't changed," he said.

The goal is to facilitate the development of parallel programming. "How do we help software developers tackle parallel programming? Both companies had teams of experts that had been focused on this problem. So, they're kindred spirits," he said.

Writing about Cilk in a blog, Reinders said Intel sees "great opportunities for Cilk to integrate with our parallel tools...including Intel Parallel Studio." The firm's technology enables "mainstream programmers to develop multithreaded (or parallel) applications...Providing a smooth path to multicore for legacy (older) applications that otherwise cannot easily leverage the performance capabilities of multicore processors," according to Cilk's Web site. Original Cilk research was done at MIT.

Rapidmind was founded five years ago as Serious Hack and grew out of work at the University of Waterloo. It boasts advanced technology for helping software developers with data parallel programming for multicore processors and accelerators.

The cost of the two acquisitions was not disclosed.

CNET.com

Is NetApp Set To Acquire Data Domain?

Storage vendor NetApp will acquire Data Domain that specializes in disk-based heterogenous back-up. Data Domain's portfolio will extend NetApp's ability to compete in the increasing number of installations wanting to minimize their reliance on tape.

Under the agreement that NetApp and Data Domain have entered into, NetApp will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Data Domain for $25 per share in cash and stock. The transaction is valued at approximately $1.5 billion.

"This combination is a great opportunity for both NetApp and Data Domain," said Dan Warmenhoven, chairman and CEO of NetApp.

"Data Domain is an innovative high-growth company with a complementary product line ideally suited for multi-vendor environments where customers want to minimize their use of tape for backup. NetApp has the distribution channels and international reach to offer Data Domain products to more customers, accelerating growth and market adoption. The combination of our two companies will increase NetApp's reputation for delivering both outstanding efficiency and operational breakthroughs to customers worldwide."

NetApp intends to operate Data Domain as a product line within NetApp's product operations organization. The Data Domain sales organization will be integrated with NetApp sales to maximize momentum and access new accounts.

"Notwithstanding the rapid record sales growth Data Domain has experienced over the past 5 years, with NetApp's distribution channel and customer base, we have an opportunity to accelerate even further," said Frank Slootman, president and CEO of Data Domain.

The Data Domain portfolio brings a complementary offering to NetApp, expanding NetApp's reach in the market for heterogeneous disk-based backup. Data Domain's portfolio will extend NetApp's ability to compete in the increasing number of installations wanting to minimize their reliance on tape. The Data Domain acquisition increases NetApp's ability to capitalize on the growth of disk-based backup adoption, especially as data deduplication gains traction.

cxotoday.com

Is McAfee set to acquire Solidcore systems?

McAfee, one of the world's largest security technology companies, is set to take over Solidcore Systems, a provider of dynamic whitelisting technology.

Both the companies have entered into an agreement with McAfee paying $33 million in cash up front and an earn-out of up to an additional $14 million if certain performances targets are met. Following the agreement, McAfee expects to couple Solidcore's dynamic application whitelisting with McAfee blacklisting or graylisting capabilities to give customers a single security platform for dynamic application control across the enterprise. Solidcore uses dynamic whitelisting technology to protect against vulnerable or malicious applications and ensure that only pre-authorized software and code can run on servers, endpoints, fixed function devices and mobile devices.

This acquisition will provide McAfee with an added heft to tackle various security challenges and help users to safely connect to the internet, browse and shop the web more securely. Solidcore's strong foot hold in market will also help McAfee to extend its reach to ATMs, Point of sale (POS) systems, Multifunction Printers (MFPs), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, mobile and other embedded devices.

Post-acquisition, the Solidcore team will be incorporated into the McAfee Risk and Compliance business unit, headed by George Kurtz, SVP and GM of McAfee.

The acquisition, which is expected to close in the second quarter of this year, is McAfee's third major buy-out since it took over Secure Computing for $500 million in August 2008.

Agencies

IBM-Sun talks on merger to extend beyond a few weeks

IBM's talks to acquire Sun Microsystems Inc are continuing and may extend beyond next week, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

IBM is still examining Sun's business as part of its due diligence process, said the source, who was not authorized to speak about the talks and therefore requested anonymity.

Neither IBM nor Sun has issued any statement to say they are in talks, although sources said last week that the two sides are negotiating a merger that would bolster IBM's high-end server and software business.

The Wall Street Journal reported on March 18 that IBM could pay as much as $8 billion for Sun, amounting to a 100 percent premium for the high-end server computer maker. If a deal is sealed, it would be IBM's largest acquisition.

The source said on Thursday that IBM's due diligence process, or examination of Sun's business, was necessary considering Sun's size and complexity.

An IBM spokesman declined to comment, and Sun was not immediately available.

Some analysts have said Sun would bolster IBM's position against rivals like Hewlett-Packard Co and Cisco Systems Inc, both of which have been acquiring smaller, niche technology firms to broaden their product and service offerings.

Agencies

Is IBM in talks to buy Sun Microsystems?

International Business Machines is in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

IBM is likely to pay at least $6.5 billion in cash to acquire Sun, the people told the paper.

That would translate into a premium of about 100 per cent over Sun's closing price on Tuesday of $4.97 a share on the Nasdaq, the paper said.

In recent months, Sun has approached a number of large tech companies in the hopes of being acquired, the paper said. Hewlett-Packard Co declined the offer, the paper said.

Sun is a maker of software and high-end computers. A spokesman for IBM declined to comment to the paper on questions about any talks with Sun. IBM and Sun could not be immediately be reached for comments.

Agencies

iGATE Pulls Out of Race to Acquire Satyam

With Satyam's financial statement still not available and government yet to cap its liabilities, iGATE has all but given up its interest in Satyam.

With Satyam's financial statement still not available and government yet to cap its liabilities, iGATE has all but given up its interest in buying stake in Satyam. The new Satyam board has recently appointed a new CEO and CFO.

The company had earlier said it was waiting for the new financial statement before deciding its next step, as the Satyam board had ruled out any part buy option.

Talking to CXOtoday, Phaneesh Murthy. CEO of iGATE, said, "Our interest in Satyam is weaning now. If a portion of the company is not being sold, then it does not attract me."

Over the last few weeks, reports indicate that Satyam has lost several of its top employees and many clients are also moving away, thereby making the value proposition no longer interesting for iGATE. "I believe that delay in decisions will erode the value of the company because of migration of customers and employees," said Murthy.

It is believed that iGATE was keenly looking at acquiring the manufacturing and EPR verticals of Satyam that were dominant over the years. But with the board not likely to issue Satyam's financial restatement in the near future, many of the other suitors are likely to pull out as well.

iGATE was among the early prospects, along with Larson & Turbo (L&T) and Essar, to express interest in acquiring the fourth largest software service provider. Since then the board has received three Expressions of Interest (EoI) from Mahindra Group, Hindujas and Spice Communications.

CXOtoday.com