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Several acquisitions are taking place in the AI field of India as it is growing to be the future of the country. Here are some of the vital acquisitions of AI companies that took place in 2021.
Spotmentor is an end-to-end skilling platform to help businesses identify skills required for the future of work, upskilling, and reskilling talent at scale. It leverages emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to help close the critical competency gaps in an organization, the statement said. "It remains our priority to enable clients with tools and resources to help them adapt to rapid changes and navigate market disruptions in the new normal," Rohan Sachdev, Partner and Consulting Leader at EY India, said. The acquisition of Spotmentor Technologies will boost digital offerings, combining strengths in strategic people consulting and seasoned experience in learning and skills development, he added.
Notion said it has acquired Automate.io, an Indian startup that builds connectivity and integrations with over 200 services, as the workplace productivity startup looks to accelerate its product expansion to become more compelling for tens of millions of individuals and businesses that are increasingly moving to digital collaborative tools. The San Francisco-headquartered startup, which was last valued at $2 billion in private markets, said the acquisition of the Hyderabad-headquartered Automate will help Notion understand the know-how of — and leverage — the 200 integrations the Indian startup has developed to give users and enterprises alike the ability to bring their workflows into Notion. The acquisition, first for Notion, is a "strategic piece to our puzzle," said Akshay Kothari, chief operating officer of Notion, in an interview with TechCrunch. "It's a sizable acquisition," he said, though he did not disclose the terms of the deal.
Edtech decacorn and India's most valued startup BYJU has acquired online exam preparation platform Gradeup in a bid to double down on the competitive exam preparations segment. The company which already had a presence in Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) will be going deeper into the exam preparation space and expanding its offering across 150 exams in 25 categories. Post the acquisition, BYJU will be rebranding Gradeup to BYJU'S Exam Prep and offer test preparation across segments including post-graduate entrance exams, Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Graduate Aptitude Test (GATE), Common Admission Test (CAT), among others.
Technology company Aicadium has announced its acquisition of Temasek-backed artificial intelligence (AI) startup, BasisAI, for an undisclosed sum. Aicadium was founded by Temasek in August 2021 to create and scale AI solutions as the state investor's global center of excellence in AI. The company leverages a team of data scientists and engineers, a repeatable and scalable process, and a platform of AI algorithms, models, and tools to help clients achieve operational AI within their organizations. On the other hand, BasisAI is a provider of scalable and responsible AI solutions through its end-to-end machine learning (ML) platform Bedrock, which the startup launched in 2020 after raising S$8.2 million in seed funding from Temasek as well as Sequoia India.
Microsoft decided to acquire a leading provider of supplier spend insights known as Suplari in July 2021 for strengthening business insight for finance and procurement leaders. This AI acquisition tends to help Microsoft in creating a new breed of data-first applications to be introduced for other processes through multiple apps like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.
