Bengaluru-based Ver Se Innovation Pvt Ltd, the owner of local language mobile app NewsHunt, has acquired design and analytics startup Vauntz, in what is seen as an acqui-hire, for an undisclosed amount, as per separate media reports.
We have contacted the company and will update the post as and when we hear from them.
Earlier this year, NewsHunt had secured funding worth $40 million (Rs 250 crore) in its Series C round led by New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge Capital. In September 2014, NewsHunt had raised $18 million in its Series B round of funding led by Sequoia Capital.
NewsHunt (earlier run by Eterno Infotech) was launched in 2009 by former Nokia employees Umesh Kulkarni and Chandrashekhar Sohoni. The company was later acquired by Ver Se in 2012 which develops mobile-based utilitarian value added services (VAS) for emerging markets. Its products include jobs, property, auto, mobile and education.
NewsHunt is a platform for local language mobile internet users and has regional content in over 12 languages and it recently forayed into eBooks with a marketplace for publishers.
Vauntz was founded in mid-2013 by computer science engineers Shreyas Desai, Maruti Borker and Piyush Rai who were previously working at iStream India. Desai and Borker have previously also worked at Google and Yahoo while Rai has worked at Rediff.
The company is a design and analytics startup which has products like Hurricane, a Big Data analytics as a service platform; Hurricane Viz, a YouTube analytics platform and Vaunt.it, an opinion sharing platform.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
