2013 was one of the most prolific years for M&A worldwide with 3169 acquisitions taking place across the globe. India had its own share of successes with RedBus, Little Eye Labs etc. going through acquisitions. However, in general, relatively few Indian startups figure on the list of acquisitions.
Last week, I hosted an iSPIRT M&A Roundtable in Palo Alto along with Jay Pullur. Attendees 
included corporate development, M&A and senior business unit folks from several key companies including Google, Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm, Groupon, Intuit, Box, VMware, Cadence, Docomo, LG, etc.
Manik Gupta (Global Product Manager – Google Maps) kicked off the Roundtable with a discussion around Google’s experiences with various acquisitions in the mapping space, both within the US and in Israel. We also had a good discussion on how to bring Indian startups into the mix.
The Roundtable was very well received by the Corporate Development attendees. Here are some takeaways for us in the Indian software product industry:
- Indian product startups, unlike Israeli startups, are just not on the radar of US acquirers. This means that our efforts to improve ‘Discovery‘ are well timed and badly needed.
Acqui-hires are extremely hot right now. Almost every company is short of engineers. Mobile, Cloud, Big Data, Analytics etc. are all in big demand! However entrepreneur preparedness in Indian startups is low. Please use our hotline to get ready in you are approached.- Almost all acquisitions have a strong BU sponsor. Business engagements are a stepping stone to future M&A.
- Acquirers are asking iSPIRT to expedite its ‘playbook‘ that articulates the process of doing an acquisition in India.
iSPIRT now has a good number of ‘Virtual Mandates” from the Silicon Valley companies. We are using these to make carefully targeted introductions to Business Exchange Associates.
Exciting times ahead… stay tuned!