BackDeals Buzz: Future Group explores deal with Aditya Birla Retail
In other news, PE firm Carlyle Group in talks to acquire Claris's injectable drugs business; Chinese consortium acquires Media.net for $900 million in mega ad-tech deal
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Mumbai: Mint brings to you your daily dose of top deals reported by newsrooms across the country.
PE firm Carlyle Group in talks to acquire Claris’s injectable drugs business
Carlyle Group, which sold its nine-year-old investment in Claris Lifesciences Ltd last year, is readying a bid for the Indian company’s injectable drugs business, reported Mint. The private equity firm will partner with a drug maker to acquire Claris’s business that is valued at about $400-450 million ( ₹ 2,600-3,000 crore).
The name of Carlyle’s partner for the bid could not be ascertained. Besides Carlyle, rival Bain Capital and drug maker Baxter International Inc. are also in discussions with Claris to acquire the business. Read more.
Piramal invests Rs150 crore in Sachin Tendulkar co-owned Smaaash Entertainment
Piramal Enterprises Ltd’s structured investment group (SIG) unit has agreed to invest ₹ 150 crore in Smaaash Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, a sports-based entertainment company co-owned by cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, reported Mint. Currently, Smaaash has five gaming arcades in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Gurgaon, Noida and Hyderabad.
The company is known for its arcades that feature sports such as cricket, football, paintball, go-karting and a host of virtual games. Smaaash was started by Shripal Morakhia in 2012 with its first centre of over 40,000 sq. ft in Mumbai. Morakhia was also founder of brokerage firm Sharekhan. Read more.
Future Group in talks with Aditya Birla Retail to buy or merge business
Kishore Biyani-led Future Group is in early discussions with Aditya Birla Retail Ltd (ABRL) to buy or merge the latter’s More supermarket business to consolidate its leadership in the brick-and-mortar retail sector and to build a large network of stores that could be leveraged in alliance with e-commerce companies for multi-channel sale of food and groceries, reported The Economic Times.
The discussions, which began a while ago and then got suspended, resumed recently. While the discussions are still exploratory, the Future Group is preparing to conduct a due diligence exercise for a possible merger or acquisition. If a deal materializes, it will be Future Group’s fourth acquisition of food and grocery chain in less than five years. The group acquired Big Apple, Nilgiri’s and Bharti Retail to create an entity that operates 738 retail stores spread over around 13 million sq. ft of space across 221 cities. Read more.
Tata’s $300 million venture fund plans to invest in start-ups across the globe
The newly set up RNT Capital Advisers, a venture fund launched by Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata, will deploy $300 million across start-ups in India, Southeast Asia and the US, reported The Times of India. This comes at a time when traditional VCs and other deep-pocketed investors have become chary about the Indian tech ecosystem as the funding environment has sobered perceptibly over the past six months.
Structured as an evergreen fund with an indefinite life, RNT Capital has University of California Investments (UC Investments) as its largest limited partner (LPs are individuals or institutions which are investors in funds).
The fund has held discussions with mobile advertising platform InMobi and logistics startup Qikpod which counts Flipkart as an investor, along with two US-based companies for potential investments. Read more.
On 4 August, Mint reported that Tata had set up a venture capital fund along with the University of California to invest in start-ups. Read more.
Chinese consortium acquires Media.net for $900 million in mega ad-tech deal
Mumbai-born entrepreneurs Divyank Turakhia and his brother Bhavin have sold their ad-tech firm Media.net for $900 million to a consortium of Chinese investors, reported TechCrunch. The start-up has its key operation centers in New York City and Dubai. Eventually the company is set to be acquired from the consortium by Miteno Communication Technology, a Chinese tech conglomerate.
The transaction is one of the largest ad-tech deals in history, ahead of notable exits like Google’s $750 million dollar acquisition of AdMob in 2010 and Twitter’s $350 million dollar acquisition of MoPub in 2013. Media.net provides a suite of products for creating, targeting and evaluating advertising campaigns. The company supports publishers by connecting them to relevant ads via their Yahoo! Bing network. Read more.
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