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Alibaba Backed Quixey Acquires App Developer Dexetra Software [DealCurry (India)](DealCurry (India) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Indian startups continue to be attractive targets for global firms. In the latest deal, US based Quixey has acquired Bangalore based Dexetra, the startup known for apps like Friday and IRIS. Reports peg the deal size to be around $10-15 Mn. Dexetra made name through its voice recognition android app, IRIS, similar to Apple's SIRI. IRIS launched few days after Apple launched SIRI, uses artificial intelligence machine learning, and natural language processing. Later, it came up with Friday app which let's you browse events that happened in the past including history of your communications, calls, text messages, emails and combines those with other events your phone is able to record, such as photos snapped and battery drains, and then it integrates it all together with data from third-party services, like Facebook and Foursquare.The company was planning to integrate IRIS with Friday. Very recently, Dexetra launched, Knock, an app using which its users could respond with a yes/no/message/call or location, with a single swipe. Founded by Narayan Babu, Yaser Hameed, Nithin John, Eby Chembola, Aibin Verghese and Binil Antony, Dexetra had received $1mn from Sequoia Capital, Qualcomm Ventures in Feb 2013 and previously raised angel funding from One97 in 2011. The buy marks the US based app search engines plans to set up a development center in the country. Post the acqui-hire all the 15 Dexetra employees would form a part of Quixey's India operations. The five year old firm founded by Tomer Kagan and Liron Shapira, enables its users to search apps through a clutter of sources including mobile, desktop, web, and browser, for which it partners with major app stores, search engines, manufacturers, carriers and web platforms. The company had raised $50 from Chinese ecommerce giant, Alibaba, which recently made new raising $25 Bn in the largest IPO. Other investors include, Translink Capital, US Venture Partners, WEBB investment Network, GGV Capital among others. The Indian Software Products Industry Roundtable (iSpirt) is said to be the deal maker. Other recent startup acquisitions: Brillio acquired Bangalore based data analytics startup Marketelligent. Yahoo gobbled up Bookpad, a year old startup for INR 500 Mn. Facebook bought LittleEyeLabs. Twitter was also planning to make its first acquisition in India by acquiring Bangalore-based Frrole. (c) 2014 EagleEye Research & Media Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |