OnMobile To Acquire Voxmobili for $35.12 Million
That’s what this story in ET claims: that mobile value added services (VAS) company OnMobile is acquiring French VAS co Voxmolibili SA for about Rs. 150 crore. Voxmobili was founded in 1999, and has applications for contact, events, tasks and notes management, data synchronization, messaging and virtual storage. It’s clients include Orange, Cingular, Vodafone, France Telecom, among others.
At one point in the story, ET claims that OnMobile CEO Arvind Rao has declined comment, yet elsewhere: “The company feels that this would give it a headstart against its competitors in this sector.” So did the company decline comment, or did it give ET the story?
OnMobile is apparently readying for an IPO, and raised a second round of funding of $27.8 million (Rs 128 crore) from Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Polygon Investment Partners last October.
Updated:
VC Circle has details of the deal: OnMobile is buying 100 percent (3,697,509 shares) of Voxmobili SA for
Whats up onmobiles sleeve? They are loosing money in India and are acquiring loss making companies further ITfinity and now Voxmobili ?????????
By the tone of this, it looks like the management and Arvind Roa are at cross roads – Buzz Vs Business – pre IPO hype ??????
Does anybody know the reality here? Please enlighten
curioius to know where did you get the information that onmobile is making losses because it is absolutely incorrect
Does anybody know the reality here? Please enlighten
i think its just a trick for boosting scale of operations before IPO and ensuring a healthy exit and ROI for Pre IPO investor .
sad part is that informed people can raise their concern at a forum like CS but CS is not read by most of the retail investor and Print media and Institutional advisers are often sold out on such companies for various reason [professional,Dubious and ignorance of tech issues ] so truth is hardly shown .
Unfair world . only thing we can do is not to buy OnMobile Shares ourself :)
Surely, a pre-ipo announcement agenda. This product (phone backup) has been on onmobile's portfolio for quite long time. The announcement is just now to make buzz and get target valuation of $800 M !!!
What is valuation of Talna in BSE?
Also, should it mean exit of people like Mauj, IMI from device app business?
@ vasu ganesh:
OnMobile is the most profitable VAS company in India. There balance sheet will be available to all of us once they file for IPO, and no company with an unfavorable balance sheet would go to the market to raise money. Also, Goldman and Duetsche will not invest in a loss making company.
@ Long Time Listner Repeat Caller
ITfinity and Voxmobili are both world class companies in their own field. A look at their client list and some google on them should clear any doubts that are very attractive options for any large VAS which wants to strengthen itself in the data space.
@ VAS-Guy
It might be pre IPO PR exercise but I dont remember seeing phone backup in the OnMobile's list of products on their website. Plus after having gone through Voxmobili's website I think their is more to them than just the plain phone backup solutions. And I dont think Mauj and IMI will be out of business anytime soon. The last I heard Mauj, being cash rich after their funding, was looking for acquisitions in and outside India.
Overall I think the VAS space in India is very exciting as of now and we can expect more excitement as more VAS companies go big with their acquisitions, funding, IPO….and the telecom market itself growing and maturing
@ Old Timer :are you working for Onmobile's PR Agency ? if Yes than ask them to device this scam more intelligently. here is my response
Regarding phone backup : see this http://www.onmobile.com/phoneBackup.html
if you want to claim that this is new addition ,post announcement than please check wayback machine archive .this page is same for past 6 months .
Regarding :"and no company with an unfavorable balance sheet would go to the market to raise money. Also, Goldman and Duetsche will not invest in a loss making company"
First , Amazon was a loss making company when they went public and it showed profit for the first time in 2001-2002 . so don't give this crap about Profitibility is a precondition to go public . its not . its a standard practice in Boom time . neeed more example ?? Lycoss, TiVo and Vonage
Regarding Goldman and others , well i think E&Y;or Goldman were underwriter of Amazon issue . if you can't get Mobile VAS right at least get Stock market right .
"Overall I think the VAS space in India is very exciting as of now and we can expect more excitement as more VAS companies go big with their acquisitions, funding, IPO….and the telecom market itself growing and maturing"
No Wonder you never talk about customer ,user of your service . its jsut infectious greed . Fyi Vox has a number portability tech also .try sell it to Airtel . everyone know where your interest are aligned and why VAS is stagnating . what you guys are doing is just saving your skin while market is good .
you had backing of most ethical company in world .who introduced the concept of ESOP in india . you should be ashamed for all this .
OnMobile is certainly the largest value added service player in the country and also a very profitable company right from 2002 onwards. No point debating this since thier numbers will be public on thier IPO listing.
They also have a very good Management team which is driving the company in the right direction. Think that they have made this acquition to extend thier international presence. A large part of thier revenues currently come from India and I think it makes eminent sense to do this.
Both people from onmobile, and some of their competitors have told me over the past few months that onmobile is profitable…
vasu: am wondering what gives you the impression that it's losing money? they're providing platform services for operators, which i'm told is the profitable part of the business. it's the application and content side which is struggling.
Onmobile is a very profitable company , being with an operator i know.
We deal with a lot of aggregators and platform companies. While on one end of the spectrum is content guys who are squeezed for money and paid ( if they are paid ) after a six to nine month period and the other end is the platform guys who would be paid x amount after a fair bit of pilots and soft launches which is not a sustained revenue stream. Onmobile has perfected the ASP model , they are covered for hardware investments and their recurring income is very strong in terms of the revenues earned ( Rs.6 / minute ).
What they are doing with the acquisition is broad basing their solutions portfolio and also ensuring that they are not bracketed as a speech recognition company, which I believe is a sensible thing to do.However their efforts on the on device portal , M Commerce have been exploratory,unsure and not very succesful steps.
Old Timer , while i agree with most of your points , just want to state that that being a loss making firm really dont matter anymore in the case of raising funds ( public or private ).
What a frenzy !! What a Denial to see the inevitable .
Mark my word guys there will be a Melt down in VAS in coming 02 years . a Meltdown like nothing these Telco's pet can imagine . this is not public offring as wee know it . its not for Expansion or broadening the portfolio
its just an exit ploy.