Indian messaging app Hike acquires hardware startup Creo

India-based messaging app Hike is back on the acquisition trail after it picked up Creo, a hardware company that previously released smartphones, streaming devices and an operating system.

The price of the deal is undisclosed. Hike released a short statement late on Friday announcing the acquisition, although it does not appear that the 50-person Creo will continue to work on hardware.

“The Creo team will begin work on a developer platform to enable third party developers to build services on the Hike platform,” a Hike spokesperson said.

Creo recently slashed the price of its Mark 1 smartphone, and it confirmed on its website that it will be its last.

“To build our next product, we need all the focus and good luck we can. Owing to this, we will no longer be making new CREO Mark1 devices or releasing any software updates,” it wrote on its website.

Bangalore-based Creo was founded in 2013, it had raised $3 million and it has plenty of links with Hike. Founders Sai Srinivas Kiran G and Shubham Malhotra are former Hike employees, while Hike CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal is one of its investors alongside major names like Sequoia.

Unsurprisingly that led to plenty of rumors of an acquisition, with The Ken reporting last October that a deal was close. Bharti Mittal rejected the deal at the time saying that Hike talks to many companies at any given time.

The deal is Hike’s third acquisition. It bought WiFi calling startup Zip Phone in 2015 and live-streaming company Pulse, although it has not confirmed the latter deal. It was valued at $1.4 billion following a $175 million investment by Tencent last year. It has raised $261 million in total.

More@ https://www.technapping.com

Source: Techcrunch

Comments

Walmart expands its grocery delivery business, powered by Uber

Walmart is expanding a test of its grocery delivery service, powered by Uber, the company announced this week. The retailer is now offering grocery delivery in two new markets — Dallas and Orlando — which join Tampa and Phoenix as locations where consumers can shop online for grocery items, then opt to have them come to their home for an additional $9.95 fee. Grocery delivery has been something Walmart has experimented with for years, starting with tests in Denver and San Jose of grocery delivery using its own service and trucks. The tests involving Uber are newer, however. In June, 2016, Walmart began a trial in Phoenix, which expanded to Tampa this March. In those locations, Walmart offers grocery delivery at five local stores per market. This week’s Dallas test is larger, with 8 stores participating. In Orlando, there are four stores involved. The grocery delivery service is available via the same online grocery shopping website where customers can place their pick-up orders — a s...

This 23-year-old just closed her second fund — which is focused on aging — with $22 million

Laura Deming is not your typical venture capitalist. Then again, she isn’t typical in many ways. For starters, the 23-year-old, New Zealand native was home schooled, developing along the way a love of math and physics and, perhaps most interestingly, the biology of aging. In fact, she became so preoccupied with the latter that at age 11, Deming wrote to Cynthia Kenyon , a renowned molecular biologist who specializes in the genetics of aging, asking if she could visit Kenyon’s San Francisco lab during a family trip to the Bay Area. Kenyon said yes. When, soon after the visit, Deming asked if she could work in the lab, Kenyon said yes again. Deming’s family moved to the U.S. to make it possible, and it’s highly doubtful they regret the decision. Indeed, by age 14, Deming was a student at MIT, and two years after that — at the tender age of 16 — she was a college drop-out, having been accepted into Peter Thiel’s two-year-old Thiel Fellowship program, which gives $100,000 to young people ...

Lilium, a German company building an electric ‘air taxi,’ makes key hires from Gett, Airbus and Tesla

Left to right: VP of Production Dirk Gebser, Head of Recruitment Meggy Sailer, CCO Dr. Remo Gerber and co-founder CEO Daniel Wiegand Lilium is almost as ambitious as European startups come. The Munich-based company is developing an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) jet, which it hopes will one day power an on-demand “air taxi” service, arguably making flying cars a reality. And although it’s still early days — the two-seater Lilium Jet prototype only took its first public (and successful) test flight in April — the startup is announcing a number of key hires from notable companies in the transportation space. They are Dr. Remo Gerber, former MD for Western Europe at Gett, who joins Lilium as chief commercial officer; Dirk Gebser, who takes up the position of VP of Production and previously held manufacturing executive roles at Airbus and Rolls Royce; and Meggy Sailer, who joined Lilium as Head of Recruitment in February and was formerly Tesla’s Head of Talent EMEA. (...

Technapping

Search This Blog