M&A: The art of the deal

The Tech Panda takes a look at recent mergers and acquisitions within various tech ecosystems and what that means for industry.

Vedanta Ltd acquires Japanese display major AvanStrate

AvanStrate Inc., a Japanese manufacturer of Gen 4 to Gen 8 TFT LCD (thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display) glass substrates, was acquired by India’s Vedanta Ltd., a diversified natural resources company. 

AvanStrate Inc., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a manufacturer of glass substrates primarily used in the production of electronic devices such as televisions, laptops, smartphones, tablets, wearables and other electronic displays. With more than 700 patents to its credit, state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and a reputation for delivering cutting-edge products, AvanStrate has a strong supply chain network and partnerships with leading technology companies worldwide.

Akarsh Hebbar, Global Managing Director of AvanStrate Inc., said, “The acquisition of AvanStrate by Vedanta marks a significant milestone and strengthens our position as a leading player in the global display value chain. AvanStrate’s display offerings include glass substrates for TFT LCD panels used in consumer electronic devices, automotive displays and medical equipment. As a wholly owned subsidiary, AvanStrate will serve as a strategic asset for Vedanta as the conglomerate looks at playing a critical role in India’s journey towards becoming self-reliant in electronics manufacturing.”

Why It Matters

Display glass serves as a foundational component across a wide array of electronic devices, spanning from consumer electronics to healthcare equipment, and from automotive systems to wearable technologies. India currently relies heavily on imports from China to meet its display requirements. With AvanStrate’s expertise, Vedanta is strategically positioned to establish India’s first integrated fab for display glass and panels, catering comprehensively to the fast-growing electronics manufacturing industry. Such a facility can significantly elevate domestic value addition in electronics manufacturing, escalating it from the current 15% to an impressive 60%.

BharatX acquires healthcare finance startup Zenifi

Y-Combinator-backed BNPL FinTech startup, BharatX has acquired Zenifi, a healthcare finance startup providing zero-cost and low-cost EMI solutions. BharatX that provides credit as a service to end users, will be entering the medical lending segment, with this acquisition.

As part of the deal, Padam Kataria, the Co-founder CEO, Zenifi will join BharatX as the Head of Business – Healthcare. Leveraging his extensive experience in the sector gained during his tenure at Navi and Zenifi, Padam will work on building BharatX’s healthcare lending vertical.

Mehul Jindal, Co-founder CEO, BharatX says, “Healthcare sector in India faces a significant challenge when it comes to paying for medical services. This becomes a problem especially during emergencies. India continues to spend the largest amount for accessing healthcare through their own pockets, making availing medical facilities an expensive proposition. We have been working with Zenifi that is addressing this problem head-on by providing realistic and affordable solutions. This acquisition will allow BharatX to go deeper into the healthcare vertical where currently no fintech or traditional players are able to disburse credit instantly, which is critical in emergency healthcare.”

Padam Kataria, CEO, Zenifi, says, “Joining forces with BharatX is a good opportunity for Zenifi. We have firsthand experience of making medical lending easy and accessible and with BharatX’s well-established credit as a service, the synergies between the two companies will ensure that we can accelerate the speed with which we capture the market. Our goal is to offer easy credit solutions to millions of Indians who are currently left with no choice but to pay OOP for medical situations.”

Why It Matters

BharatX has a long-standing partnership with Zenifi as they were one of the earliest partners to provide a lending platform to extend credit. By being a part of BharatX, Zenifi team can leverage the pre-existing lending platform and realise better economics. And this acquisition will allow BharatX to break into the healthcare sector, a sector ripe for disruption and one of the largest sectors needing credit after its disruptive success in online shopping credit solutions.

Absolute Sports Acquires SoapCentral.com

Absolute Sports, a Nazara Technologies subsidiary and the parent company of Sportskeeda.com and ProFootballNetwork.com, signed an asset purchase agreement, subject to closing conditions, to acquire all of the assets of SoapCentral.com, a premier source of entertainment content in the US. The transaction is for an all-cash consideration of $1.4 Million (~ INR 11.6 crores) and is expected to be closed in the next 30 days. In CY23, SoapCentral.com had revenues of US $621K (~ INR 5.2 crores). Absolute Sports will use its cash reserves to fund the transaction.

“The entertainment publishing industry is more than twice the size of sports publishing (Similarweb, 2024) and allows us a great canvas for expansion into multiple content categories,” said Ajay Pratap Singh, CEO of Absolute Sports. “Having tested our content publishing and hyper-growth playbook with the acquisition of Pro Football Network last year, we are confident of scaling Soap Central in a very short time.”

Why It Matters

Absolute Sports aims to become one of the leading sports and entertainment focused publishers in the US market and this acquisition is a strong step towards achieving that goal. The company already operates SK Pop (Pop-Culture) and has experience scaling entertainment content under the SK-Pop banner.

Cloudflare, Inc. Acquires BastionZero

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the connectivity cloud company, announced the acquisition of BastionZero, a Zero Trust infrastructure access platform, to further strengthen remote access to core IT systems for customers of Cloudflare One, the company’s secure access service edge (SASE) platform.

Combined with existing Cloudflare One capabilities, the acquisition of BastionZero gives IT and security teams Zero Trust controls for infrastructure like servers, Kubernetes clusters, and databases. This expands the scope of Cloudflare’s VPN replacement solution beyond apps and networks to infrastructure resources. As a result, security teams can centralize management of even more of their hybrid IT environment, while using standard Zero Trust practices to keep DevOps teams productive and secure.

“The world of work has changed dramatically. Employees have the expectation that they can effectively do their work from anywhere. There’s no reason why teams managing an organization’s most important systems can’t have the same flexibility,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO, Cloudflare.

“Incorporating BastionZero into Cloudflare One gives IT teams access to an organization’s most critical inner workings securely, wherever they are. Millions of organizations around the world trust Cloudflare to protect their systems and data so they can focus on their business and their customers. The addition of BastionZero is just one more way we can protect them like no one else can.”

Why It Matters

With traditional virtual private network (VPN) security set-ups, developers and systems architects are granted overly permissive and long-lived access to a company’s most sensitive systems, such as servers and databases. In a world of hybrid work, this is an increasingly costly, risky, and outdated approach, hindering the ability to securely deploy new systems and react to a fast-changing business environment.

Phenom acquires HR Tech company Tydy

Phenom announced its acquisition of Tydy, a human resources technology company focused on delivering pre-boarding and onboarding experiences for employees – from hire to retire. The fifth acquisition and addition to the Intelligent Talent Experience platform portfolio fortifies Phenom’s vision to shorten time to productivity for employees, while creating efficient experiences for HR practitioners, all from one platform.

Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and co-founder of Phenom, said, “With the addition of Tydy, we’re poised to empower organizations to ensure their employees are productive from the start. Onboarding is a pivotal moment in the talent journey where candidates become employees — and where talent leaders can set them up for success. With Tydy, we will further strengthen the connection between candidates and employees to create a phenomenal end-to-end talent experience. This solves a crucial need for talent acquisition and talent management teams to complete necessary operational steps, verifications, and documentation leading up to an employee’s first day. It also shortens time to productivity while creating a fast, transparent, and easy experience for new hires that makes a lasting, positive impact on employees.”

Kiran Menon, Co-Founder- Tydy, said, “We realized there was an opportunity to overhaul onboarding experiences and complex HR operations for the better by combining persona-based segmentation, integrations, automation, and intelligence into one solution.”

Why It Matters

The acquisition of Tydy by Phenom comes on the heels of a massive wave of HR tech innovations that were announced at IAMPHENOM 2024 in April. At its annual conference, the company unveiled a Talent Experience Engine, X+ Agents, unique platform experiences for Talent Leaders and Talent Marketers, and multiple innovations for Talent Acquisition and Talent Management.