IBM to snap up RedHat in $34 B deal; ZipGo acquires Supreme Trans Concepts

IBM plans to acquire open source champion Red Hat for $34 billion at $190 per share in an all-cash deal. The deal has been put up for approval by the board and shareholders of Red Hat. Over the last two decades, Red Hat has championed the open source movement. Companies like Facebook and Amazon have dabbled with Red Hat's open source knowledge before they went on to become a multi-million-dollar business. Red Hat, on the other hand, could not monetise its own product suite effectively, and annual revenue remained around $3 billion.

Bengaluru-based online bus aggregator ZipGo has acquired Pune-based Supreme Trans Concepts, including its bus aggregation platforms, MetroZip and CityZip. While the amounts and details of the deal remain undisclosed, ZipGo now has a 100 percent stake in Supreme Trans Concepts. The acquisition, says ZipGo, makes it the largest technology-driven B2C bus company in India and in line with its decision to make further inroads into the electric vehicle and e-rickshaw space.

Flipkart Internet Private Ltd, which operates the Flipkart marketplace, narrowed its consolidated loss for the financial year 2018 to Rs 1,160 crore as against a loss of Rs 1,640 crore, documents filed with Registrar of Companies (RoC) showed. Flipkart posted an operating revenue of Rs 2,790 crore for the financial year 2018, compared with Rs 1,882 crore, registering a growth of around 48 percent. Group company Flipkart India Private Ltd, which runs the wholesale business, posted a 39 percent rise in revenue to Rs 21,658 crore for FY18, compared with Rs 15,569 crore in the previous fiscal. Unlike the marketplace unit, the wholesale business unit’s net loss widened nine-fold to Rs 2,065 crore.

Contemporary fashion jewellery brand, Sukkhi Online has raised $7 million from Carpediem Capital and Duane Park. Founded by Bhavesh Navlakha with minimum capital in 2012, Sukkhi Online is a contemporary fashion jewellery brand. It aims to provide quality and trendy fashion jewellery at competitive prices. On October 29, 2018, the company raised $7 million from Carpediem Capital and Duane Park. The fund will largely be used to grow Sukkhi Online's brand and reach its last mile customers across the country and globally, said Bhavesh in a press release.

Online aggregator for medical supplies, Medikabazaar raised $5 million in Series A funding. The funding round was led by healthcare venture capital fund HealthQuad and included other investors like Elan Corporation, Sasaki Foods, CBC Co. Ltd, Kois Invest, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, and existing investors Sunil Kalra, Arun Venkatachalam and Rebright Partners II Investment Partnership. Medikabazaar plans to use this funding to strengthen its technology and increase its team size including senior leadership.

In a bid to attract more startups to the bourses, market regulator SEBI has proposed a relaxation of listing norms. First, SEBI has proposed the renaming of Institutional Trading Platform (ITP) to Innovators Growth Platform (IGP), and has also announced that IGP would be the main platform under which startups can list themselves. Second, startups can now trade under the regular category within a year of their listing. Earlier, they were mandated to complete three years under IGP before making it to the regular category. SEBI has also proposed a reduction in the minimum trading lot size to Rs 2 lakh from the existing Rs 10 lakh.

Ashish Kashyap, the serial entrepreneur who earlier founded Ibibo Group, which was acquired by MakeMyTrip two years ago, has received a seed investment of $30 million for his latest venture INDwealth, which is yet to launch its operations. Steadview Capital, an India dedicated fund is investing $30 million in this venture. Founded in June this year, INDwealth will be a full-stack wealth-tech platform that will leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning and will begin operations in January 2019. It will act as a one-stop solution for users to manage their investments, liabilities, future cash flows and taxation.

Microsoft Corporation became the second most valuable company in the world, overtaking ecommerce platform Amazon on October 26 after the latter posted weak earnings for the third quarter, which pulled its stock down by more than seven percent. The fall in Amazon's share price wiped out $65 billion from its market capitalisation. Its market cap now stands at $805 billion, down from $1 trillion in September. Microsoft, on the other hand, reported strong quarterly numbers, which took its stock up four percent to reach a market capitalisation of $828 billion. This is the first time since April that Microsoft's market cap has surpassed that of Amazon.

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