M&A this month & why they matter

The Tech Panda takes a look at recent mergers and acquisitions within various ecosystems.

Qapita acquires ESOP Direct

Qapita, a Singapore and India based equity management firm has completed 100% acquisition of Pune based ESOP Direct in a full cash transaction. This will see Qapita secure full ownership of ESOP Direct’s operating entities from its shareholders.

Ravi Ravulaparthi, CEO & Co-Founder of Qapita, “The incredible team at ESOP Direct pioneered stock compensation serving leading companies in this region. This acquisition is an important step to executing our vision of creating one unified platform for all equity matters, in our bid to build rails for the private markets.

“Complementing knowledge leadership with cutting edge technology will allow us to serve customers through the lifecycle, from incorporation to liquidity events, to IPOs and beyond. We look forward to enabling our customers in creating more equity owners in this region and making every one of them count.”

Why It Matters

With this acquisition, Qapita will become a market leader in this region catering to both listed and unlisted clients, expanding its customer base in India and Southeast Asia to more than 1,200 customers. The combined entity will also manage more than US$ 12 billion in Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs), with more than 130,000 employee owners.

Also, Qapita will expand its product and engineering team to more than 100 professionals while further cementing its presence in major startup hubs in India such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, and Chennai, in addition to its Southeast Asian presence in Singapore and Jakarta, while doubling its employees from 100 to more than 220.

Qapita expects the value of private securities in this region to exceed US$1-1.5 trillion with the presence of 200 to 250 unicorns within the next few years, and that scalable digital solutions will be critical for such an ecosystem to thrive. Creating a digital ledger for management of equity will be the first step towards creating a Qapita marketplace for liquidity as it estimates that more than US$250 billion in equity will require liquidity solutions.

Qapita is backed by leading venture capital investors and financial institutions including Vulcan Capital, East Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Endiya Partners, Citibank, NYCA Capital as well as leading angel investors from both India and Southeast Asia.

CommerceIQ Acquires e.fundamentals

CommerceIQ, a retail ecommerce management platform, has acquired e.fundamentals, a Digital Shelf Analytics (DSA) provider headquartered in the UK. CommerceIQ now provides its customers retailer coverage and localized support across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions.

“Customers love how our intelligent automations help their teams to win on ecommerce retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Instacart,” said Guru Hariharan, founder and CEO of CommerceIQ, “They’ve been asking us to accelerate our coverage to all global retailers important to their business. Our acquisition of e.fundamentals does just that, adding world-class digital shelf analytics and support for over 450 retailers across 41 countries. We are now the first platform to connect and intelligently automate across shelf, sales, supply chain, and advertising to help our customers win big.”

As part of this acquisition, UK-based e.fundamentals led by CEO John Maltman, will merge operations with the US-based CommerceIQ. Customers will have access to the combined offerings and customer-obsessed support team worldwide.

Why It Matters

Supply chain disruptions, high inflation, and fierce competition make the launch of this new global platform critical for manufacturers to achieve their ecommerce profitability and market share goals. While most brands experienced a pandemic fueled acceleration of ecommerce growth, up 92% since 2019, overall ecommerce sales dropped by 1.8% in April, even as in-store sales rose by 10%1. With CommerceIQ brands can now:

• Drive profitability: Optimise trade spend and joint business planning (JBP) investments. Plus reclaim lost profit margin and revenue by automating the recovery of disputed shortages and chargebacks.
• Optimise omnichannel for profitable growth: by capturing store-level availability, distribution and pricing across retailers daily, optimize omnichannel fulfillment, manage inventory, and control promotional spend and costs.
• Maximise share of voice and share of search: Empower brands or agencies of record (AOR) to be consistently visible on page 1 search through great content and sponsored ads, plus optimize advertising to drive incremental sales on highest margin items and for the most strategic share of voice (SOV) gains.
• Maximise instock rate: Ensure products stay in stock by automatically shifting promotions away from items at risk of going out of stock (OOS) and by triggering predictive replenishment orders.
• Stop revenue leakage: Stop losing revenue to competitors and unauthorized third party (3P) sellers by understanding buy box behavior and for unauthorized sellers automating detection, ticketing, and removal.

Consumer brands can now harness one global software platform to power profitable market share growth across all major retailers with the combination of sales, supply chain, and retail media automations from CommerceIQ plus digital shelf activity and store-level availability insights from e.fundamentals.

The first combined offering from this acquisition, e.fundamentals by CommerceIQ, is now available as a free trial for all current CommerceIQ and e.fundamentals customers and for select new prospects. This new product combines modern workflows, deeper analytics to uncover assortment gaps and retail media targeting opportunities, and new recommendations aimed at helping customers zero in on top prioritized actions to manage their digital shelf presence across retailers.

GoTo to acquire Miradore

GoTo, a business communications and IT support and management platform, announced its intent to acquire cloud-based device management provider Miradore from Nordic technology investor Standout Capital and other shareholders. With the addition of Miradore’s broad mobile device management capabilities to the GoTo portfolio and GoTo Resolve IT support platform, small and midsized businesses (SMBs) can partner with GoTo for all IT needs.

“Miradore’s scalable, SMB-focused solutions are a natural fit for GoTo and our customers, and we’re extremely excited to be working together,” said Mike Kohlsdorf, CEO of GoTo. “Not only does it provide a leading platform for mobile and MacOS device management, Miradore also brings a talented team of employees, more than 2,700 customers and MSP distributors, and over 89,000 user accounts across 180 countries. All of this will further bolster GoTo’s internal talent and market potential within the fast-growing MDM market, which is expected to surpass $28 billion by 2027.”

Why It Matters

Miradore is a leading Mobile Device Management (MDM) cloud solution built specifically for SMBs, allowing IT teams to manage end users across iOS, Android, Windows and MacOS. With bring-your-own-device adoption and hybrid work models increasingly becoming the global norm, and with iOS, Android, and MacOS making up roughly two thirds of Operating Systems worldwide, this acquisition further delivers on GoTo’s vision of providing IT leaders with the tools to support any device, anywhere, anytime with best-in-class security and consumer-grade ease of use.

Following the expected integration of Miradore into the GoTo resolve IT support and management product early next year after the deal closes, IT leaders will have full management and support capabilities across any device:

• No devices left behind: IT teams have streamlined support through extended device management capabilities to all commonly used mobile devices and operating systems from a single vendor and application.
• Security for company-issued and bring-your-own devices: New device lockdown and control capabilities limit the risk of data exposure, building on GoTo Resolve’s best-in-class enterprise-grade encryption and zero-trust architecture.
• Simplified workflows and cost savings: All operations are managed in a unified tool and unified admin system combining GoTo’s best-in-class communications, remote support, desktop management, and Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) capabilities with Miradore’s top-rated Mac and mobile device management, saving SMBs valuable resources, time, and money.