Read about Merger and Acquisition deals of Infosys acquiring Blue Acorn iCi and Flipkart buying stake in Aditya Birla Fashion as well as Private Equity deal of Razorpay Software raising funds to enter unicorn club.

Razorpay Software Pvt. Ltd. enters unicorn club: 

Razorpay Software Pvt. Ltd announced that it raised $100 million in a series D funding round and reached the unicorn milestone with a valuation of over $1 billion. Razorpay was established in 2013 by IIT Roorkee alumni Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur with objective of helping every business accept digital payments.

The funding round was led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund along with Sequoia Capital and existing investors Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, Y-Combinator and Matrix Partners.

Razorpay added that GIC is a good partner to have because they are a significant public market investor. They are a major investor in marquee financial companies like Bajaj Finance, Bandhan Bank and many others.

Company plans to use the fresh capital for its product lines neo-banking platform RazorpayX and lending arm Razorpay Capital.

 

Infosys acquires Blue Acorn iCi, US:

Infosys announced that it has completed the acquisition of Blue Acorn iCi group, for a cash consideration of $125 million. Blue Acorn iCi group is a digital consumer experience, commerce and analytics firm based out of US.

Infosys is headquartered in Bangalore and provides business consultancy, information technology and outsourcing services.

Blue Acorn iCi was formed as a result of merger of Blue Acorn, a digital commerce UX design and strategy agency and iCi Digital, a data driven marketing solutions provider. The Company is an award-winning digital customer experience, commerce and analytics company, and a leading Adobe Platinum partner across North America. 

Blue Acorn iCi brings to Infosys, significant cross-technology capabilities through the convergence of customer experience, digital commerce, analytics, and experience driven commerce services.

 

Flipkart buys stake in Aditya Birla fashion:

Flipkart Group and Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited (ABFRL) announced a new strategic partnership where in Walmart backed Flipkart will invest Rs. 1500 Crore in ABFRL for a stake of 7.8%.

The Flipkart Group is one of India’s leading digital commerce entities and includes group companies Flipkart, Myntra, and PhonePe. Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited is India’s largest pure-play fashion and lifestyle company with a strong bouquet of leading fashion brands and retail formats.

Flipkart Group will strengthen the range of brands offered on its e-commerce platforms Flipkart and Myntra and try to improve its offline retail capability with this strategic partnership.

The Indian Retail has heated up tremendously after Reliance group raised over $ 20 billion globally for its retail and digital service business. Flipkart (backed by American retail giant Walmart), Amazon and Reliance are set to create intense competition in the e-commerce and retail space. This can possibly create a consolidation wave as well as the smaller players in the retail sector may find it difficult to sustain. Retail sector is already seeing increased M&A activity off late.

 

Acknowledgements: RBI Bulletin (www.bulletin.rbi.org.in), SEBI (www.sebi.gov.in), NSE (www.nseindia.com), BSE (www.bseindia.com)

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