The Venture Intelligence Blog

Silicon Valley lore has several famous episodes of acquisition talks that did not materialize: from that of Google by Excite (whose CEO apparently refused to pay up $75,000) and by Yahoo  (when the Google founders walked away from a $3-B offer) and that of Yahoo (for $44.6 B) by Microsoft . In March 2015, the lore extended to Indian shores when,  InMobi - which dares to combat Google and Facebook in the mobile advertising segment - walked away from a $1 billion offer from the search engine giant (according to multiple media reports, sample:  Business Insider ). Will  InMobi CEO Naveen Tewari's decision to walk away  turn out as well as that of Google's own or more Yahoo like? Only time will tell. But questions are being raised as to why, when other Indian startups like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Ola are able to attract investments at   valuations of multiple billions of dollars with seeming ease  over the last couple of years, hasn't InMobi (that las...

Cross Posted from the Entrevista Blog In this audio interview ("podcast"), Palem Srikanth shares his amazing entrepreneurial journey - from a Stanford educated logistics executive with Hewlett Packard to returning to India and starting a Dosa restaurant chain to the tough lessons from making cross-border acquisitions to the recent sale of the logistics software business (to US Private Equity firm Francisco Partners-backed Kewill) for about Rs.275 crores.   The Podcast can be downloaded from here . (Use Right Click > Save As to save the file to your desktop) Highlights : Importance of Financial Strength in the Enterprise Software space How persistence and investing in technology (to ensure Four Soft's products  were cutting edge)  provided the maximum return - much more than the expensive acquisitions the company made  Managing the confidentiality of the transaction involving a listed company - so that there is no misuse of insider informa...

Technology Holdings' client, Allsec Technologies, has completed the acquisition of Retreat Capital Management, a full service mortgage BPO company headquartered in Irvine. Technology Holdings was the exclusive advisor on the transaction. Retreat Capital is an end-to-end provider of loss mitigation and portfolio management services for mortgage lenders, servicers, asset managers and investors. Established by industry professionals with over 25 years in the mortgage and real estate industries, Retreat Capital was created to serve as a single-source solution for reducing costs and mitigating loss at every stage of the mortgage process, from predictive modeling to processing through REO management. Allsec Technologies is a leading Business Process Outsourcing service provider headquartered in Chennai, whose investors include The Carlyle Group. Allsec's stock exchange announcement is here For additional information, please contact: Vivek Subramanyam Managing Director vivek@technolog...

Cognizant to pay about $135 million in cash as Sequoia Capital India reaps fourth exit in almost as many months from its WestBridge Capital avatar investments. Edited extracts from Cognizant's press release : Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation , a leading provider of global IT and business process outsourcing services, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire marketRx , a India- and US-based provider of analytics and related software services to global Life Sciences companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices segments. Cognizant will pay approximately $135 million in cash, which will be funded from current cash reserves. marketRx combines analytics, market research and software services to provide scalable, web-based solutions in three functional areas for Life Sciences companies: Sales Management & Operations, Brand Marketing & Product Management and Market Research. marketRx's client base includ...