Annasha, Author at Your Tech Story

Mastek – An Indian Software Company That Was Founded By Three IIM Graduates.

Founded in 1982, Mastek is a publicly-traded Indian company based in Mumbai, India. It is a multinational software technology company that mainly specializes in digital transformation services and cloud consulting. Mastek has served more than 1,500 customers successfully across 40 countries. It offers services in five leading industries, namely, public sector & government, healthcare & life science, retail & customer, manufacturing & industrial, and financial sector. Mastek offers services to both public and private organizations across different nations in the US, Middle East, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the UK, apart from India. In 2021, Mastek was featured in Forbes Asia Best Under a Billion list.

About Mastek

The three IIM Ahmedabad graduates, Ashank Desai, Ketan Mehta, and R Sundar founded Mastek in 1982. These three co-founders were batchmates of 1979 and they were later joined by Sudhakar Ram who is a very influential Indian business leader. Mastek helps various enterprises by harnessing the power of data to give them a digital advantage and stay in the competition. Focussing more on unleashing the power of data in the 21st century, Mastek has established a partnership with Lytics for Customer Data Activation and Personalization by enabling D2X (Direct to Stakeholder) transformation. The company is also recognized as one of the UK’s fastest-growing Indian companies in terms of revenue growth year on year.

Management and Software Technology Private Limited

In 1982, three students of IIM Ahmedabad incorporated Management and Software Technology Private Limited and later brought Sudhakar Ram into the team. Sudhakar Ram also played his role as the CEO of the company until 2016. When the company was founded it aimed to design and deliver computer software to various types of businesses across diverse fields. In the same year of the establishment, the first project went lives which was a decision support system for Vicks Vaporub. The products were designed to generate production plans for the company in Indian in the most optimized way possible.

After a decade of incorporating the company, its name was changed to Mastek in 1992. In the same year, it acquired a UK IT company, Carter Cast Systems. This acquisition was made to enter the UK market in Theale. After changing its name the company decided to public in the same year and got listen in both Mumbai Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange in India. Soon it founded its UK subsidiary and it was named MajescoMastek. In 1995, Mastek bid for the London Congestion Charging Scheme which went live in February 2003. So the company got invited to join the consortium and Mastek became responsible for delivering several applications for the NHS Spine for a long time.

Growth and Expansion

In 2000, Mastek became the first IT solutions company in the entire world to be assessed at P-CMM Level 3. After a couple of years, the company established the Mastek Foundation which represented a corporate and social responsibility wing of both Mastek and Majesco. In 2003, as Mastek started working on SPINE projects, the company delivered over 130 such projects within the next ten years. Eventually, the company started making more acquisitions over the next years that include Entegram LLC, a Conneticut-based software company, and Vector Insurance Services, a tech company focusing insurance industry. Mastek acquired a few companies in the North American region like the Systems Task Group (STG) which also focused on the insurance industry.

In 2009 MastekMajesco entered the Canadian market. The demerger of MastekMajesco took place in 2014 and all the insurance businesses were consolidated under the brand name, Majesco. In 2015, after the demerger, Mastek acquired a UK-based consultancy firm, Indigo Blue. In the same year, Company launched a project called Deep Blue to encourage engineering students to solve various problems using coding skills. Mastek has recently acquired Evosys to fuel its digital transformation growth.

Hiral Chandrana – CEO of Mastek Group

Hiral Chandrana is the Global CEO of the Mastek Group. He has more than 25 years of experience in the IT sector and digital solutions for various industries. Working with Fortune 1000 global clients across various countries has made him a very experienced global leader. Mr. Chandrana is from an engineering background and later completed his MBA.

Annasha

Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

Insignia Systems – One Of The Biggest Advertising Media Companies In The United States.

Insignia Systems, famous as Insignia, is one of the three market leaders in the United States that dominates the promotional media service industry. The company was founded in 1990 in Minnesota, US by G.L. Hoffman and David Eiss. Insignia is a publicly-traded company that currently serves clients in the US region. It has a very experienced team comprised of shopper engagements experts who are thorough with everyday consumer behavior. The company mainly offers a point of sale in-store signs and promotional advertisements of various consumer packaged good businesses.

About Insignia Systems

Insignia Systems is one of the top 50 pop companies in North America according to Creative Magazine. The company has restricted itself to the US to date but it is one of the three dominating companies in its sector in the region. Insignia Systems is a company that is divided into two parts. One division is responsible for managing a direct relationship and engagements with retailers for placing signs in stores and the second division is responsible for marketing and providing these signs to the fast-moving consumer goods (consumer packaged good companies). These signs are placed in various retail locations.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company’s sales started declining, and currently, it is looking for any merger or acquisition so that the company remains afloat. In 2021, Insignia reported a net loss of $2.6 million for the first nine months. It might take some time for the company to recover, at least for the few upcoming quarters.

The Backstory of the Company

More than three decades ago when Insignia was founded on the 2nd of January 1990, the company started selling impulse signs machines. These machines could print in-store signs and labels and that was the primary focus of the company. One year after the company was founded, Insignia decided to go public in 1991 and started trading on NASDAQ. It started trading in the national market after a decade.

In 1993, new software was introduced as the precursor of the Insignia like which was known as the Stylus software. It was for Insignia’s POPS line and a few years later the impulse machine sold in the initial days was replaced by the SignRight machine. And, in 1998, Insignia’s POPS program became the featured product of the company. This program is the consumer-facing brand of the company where it consists of a sign mainly out up in the grocery stores. Through this POPS Program, Insignia has access to more than 23,000 stores all over the US.

Success

The POPS Program became the new face of the company and the reason why Insignia became famous rapidly. In the late 1990s, the sales of the company started dropping and it became a tough year to cope up. So, in May 1998, Insignia POPS signs were introduced in the market and it became the company’s primary focus. The company also decided to bring in new members into the leadership team as Scott Drill took the position of CEO in the company. It was under his leadership that the POPS business was established and executed properly. The business started growing so rapidly that from 1 million signs in 2001 to the number reached 14 million by next ten years. In 2006, the company also landed a long-term partnership with Valassis Communications for filling the in-store void for the company.

In 2011, Insignia became a part of the lawsuit that was between the company and News America Marketing. The ground of the lawsuit was engaging in various antitrust practices but after the settlement of the lawsuit, Insignia became the one and only third-party provider of in-store signs with the price. In the following years, Insignia has made its POP signs graphically customizable and also introduced The Like Machine as one of their marketing solutions.

Kristine Glancy – CEO of Insignia Solutions

Kristine Glancy is an experienced executive with more than twenty years of experience in the retail industry. She joined Insignia in 2016 and since then launched several new products. When Kristine joined the company, it was having a downward trend but under her leadership, the company reversed operating loss of nearly $3 million in 2018. She completed her bachelor’s from St. Mary’s University of San Antonio, Texas.

Annasha

Life360 – A Family Networking App That Received Funding From Both Google And Facebook.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Life360 is a social family networking app that was initially released in the market in 2008. Chris Hulls is the founder of the company and it’s currently based in San Francisco, US. Life360 is a publicly-traded information technology company that is operated by consumers across the world except in China. The application offers location-based services, alarming with notifications, sharing location, etc. The idea behind Life360 was to design software that would virtually keep a family together and safe. The Life360 app is available for both Android and iOS users.

About Life360 app

The Life360 app has got several features to always get a real-time update on your friends and family members. There are alerts when your family is entering or leaving any specific places or even when they are driving or just walking. One will also receive a notification after the completion of every drive and get to know if they are running low on battery. One of the features called the Driver Protect offers crash detection, roadside assistance, and updated weekly driver reports. The app is designed in a way that it can automatically detect an accident and dispatches emergency services if needed. This feature can also connect the drivers to trained advisors that can assist during minor accidents.

There are two other important features offered by Life360, namely, Check-In and Help Alert. It is a bit worrisome for parents to let their kids or senior citizens travel alone. So, the Check-In feature helps in getting quick updates for when they are traveling, leaving a place, or arriving. The Help Alert button sends an alert to all the emergency contacts and in the Life360 circle with a click of a single button. It also shows the other users when that button was pressed.

Initial Days

Chris Hulls had the idea for Life360 when he was an undergrad student. The initial prototype was launched in the Android marketplace in 2008. Chris received initial funding for Life360 from both Facebook and Google. Life360 participated and won Google’s Android Developer Challenge in 2008 and received $275,000 as of the grant money. This was a huge amount and got the company started in the early stage. After the company started growing it received the funds of $5.5 million, $17 million, and $50 million in Series A, Series B, and Series C funding respectively.

In 2013, Life360 entered into a partnership with BMW such that the location services of the company would be integrated into the navigation system of BMW cars. In this same year, the company also crossed more than 34 million, outrunning Foursquare. By the end of 2013, Life360 had over 40 million registered users. Another reason that Life360 witnessed a growth in the number of users was Google decided to discontinue its platform, Google Latitude in August 2013. Eventually, the company also added more languages to the app other than English and added international SMS.

Recent Events

With every year, the company kept on adding more and more features to the app making it helpful in every way. In 2016, Life360 launched the feature of automatic car crash detection and contacting the people on the emergency list. Life360 started a joint venture with ADT Go and the news was announced by ADT at the CES 2018. ADT has a very expansive security infrastructure to connect and protect its customers outside the home.

Life360 became a public company in 2019 as it was listed in the Australian Securities Exchange and the fund raised was invested to expand globally and partner with various insurance companies. Life360 has recently acquired two new companies. They are a guide app called ZenScreen and an American electronics company, Tile.

Chris Hulls – Founder of Life360

Chris Hulls is a travel enthusiast and a tech entrepreneur. He served in the military after passing high school and was deployed to the Middle East. As an undergrad student at the University of California Berkely, he got an internship with Goldman Sachs. He always wanted to go to the South Pole but in a medical test, he got to know that he has a tumor and life took a different turn.

Annasha

Linx S.A. – A 35-years old Brazilian software company recently merged with StoneCo.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Established in 1985, Linx S.A. is a Brazilian company that was recently merged with StoneCo over a transaction worth $1.1 billion. It is a publicly-traded company and the largest software house in Latin America in the retail management sector. The company retains approximately 40% of the retail management software in its home country. In the early 2000s, the company was consecutively featured in the Valor 1000 annual report as one of the biggest Brazilian companies. It has also made plenty of acquisitions both before and after the merger with StoneCo.

About Linx S.A.

Nércio Fernandes is a Brazilian entrepreneur who has founded Linx S.A. in 1985. Linx S.A. has established itself in the management software industry and it offers cloud-based solutions that are easy to use and affordable. It has a SaaS business model that it offers to retailers in Latin America. Like every other software company, Linx also witnessed high growth in revenue during the pandemic as only the subscription revenue accounted for R$866.6 million. Linx S.A. has also received many awards for its rapid growth and technology. In 2009, Linx became the fifth-largest company in the country in terms of sales. In 2017, the company was acknowledged by BR Week for Best Software Provider of Receipt Emission.

History

When the company was founded by Nércio Fernandes and his other partners, it was named Microserv Comércio & Consultoria Ltda. Nércio Fernandes wanted to invest in the microcomputing field and so he established this company even though he was from a civil engineering background. Initially, the company started serving small businesses in the regions of Brás and Bom Retiro in São Paulo. A few years later, Microserv created software for fashion retail management and it was called MicroMalhas. In 1990, the company’s name was changed to Linx followed by Linx ERP. During this time, the flagship product of the company focussed on several industries ‘ retail management.

In 2000, the company opened a new unit, Linx Logistica for internal logistics. The company eventually opened other divisions of Linx as the business expanded and the structure evolved. Some of the other divisions are Linx Sistemas and Linx Telecom. These segments focused on telecommunication and connectivity for retail. Linx thought a holding company will be necessary to unify the business units and hence LMI S.A. emerged in 2004 and was later renamed Linx S.A. As Linx S.A. was expanding, it moved its main office in 2011 to a commercial building in São Paulo. It also landed an investment from an American private equity firm, General Atlantic.

Merger and Acquisition

Linx acquired Quadrant Informatica Ltda in 2008. The deal was closed for R$39.9 million. In the next year, it acquired Formata Data Business for R$41.1 million followed by Intercommerce Retail Software for R$13.6 million. In 2010, Linx acquired two new companies, namely, CNP Engenharia de Sistemas S.A. and Dia System Informática Ltda for R$16 miilion and R$13.8 respectively. It also acquired Custom Business Solutions Ltda, Spress Informatica, and Microvix Software in 2011. In 2012, Linx S.A. made a deal with itix Consultoria em Tecnologia da Informação Ltda. for the transfer of its technology. The size of acquisitions got bigger as in 2014, Linx acquired a series of companies and the total transaction amount exceeded R$100 million. In 2020, Linx celebrated its 35th anniversary and acquired PinPag, Neemo, Humanas, and a few other companies.

Nércio Fernandes – Founder of Linx S.A.

Nércio Fernandes started his studies in civil engineering. But, his greater interest in the computer field led to entrepreneurship. At the age of 22, he decided to drop out of college and start his venture. His first company was Linx S.A. after which he founded a few other companies. These companies include Okean Yachts, TAQE, and Predicta. Currently, he is a Board Member of all these companies including Linx S.A.

Annasha

Kaltura, One of the leading tech innovators famous for its video platform.

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Kaltura is a global publicly-traded company established in the internet video industry. The founders of the company are Ron Yekutiel, Shay David, Michal Tsur, and Eran Etam. Kaltura was founded in 2006 and it is currently based in New York City, US. It is mainly a software company that offers products in four major markets. They are Cloud TV (over-the-top media service), online video platform (OVP), Education Video Platform, and Enterprise Video Platform. When Kaltura was founded, it was established with an idea that video content is a way to revolutionize communication and collaboration in our lives.

About Kaltura

Kaltura works as a team of approximately 750 members. The company has offices in foreign countries like Brazil, Singapore, Israel, the UK, and the US. From all the co-founders of the company, Eran Etam is not holding any current position at Kaltura. In 2018, Kaltura was on the list of “20 Tech Innovators to Watch” and two years later it became one of the companies to exceed $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

The company offers video product solutions across every enterprise in various industries. For educational purposes, it has three products, Virtual Classroom, LMS Video, and Lecture Capture. Recently, Malaysia’s leading entertainment company, Astro has chosen Kaltura for its new streaming service. In December 2021, the company has also collaborated with Vodafone Germany.

Early Days of the Company

Founded in 2006, Company was officially launched in the market in 2007 at the TechCrunch40 industry event. Thus the launch of the company took place in San Francisco and those who were attending the conference voted Kaltura for the People’s Choice award. When the company was launched, Kaltura operated with only twenty members and received funding of $2.1 million from Avalon Ventures and other investors. In 2007, the company became a hit as it became the winner of the Mashable Open Web Awards. It was a People’s Choice Award where more than 250,000 people voted in the Video Sharing category. In the same year, Company also established a partnership with New York Public Library.

Kaltura became one of the companies in 2008 that received “Global 250 Winners” by AlwaysOn. The company established a partnership with Wikimedia Foundation in the same year with a common goal to bring quality media content to Wikipedia and other similar websites. The main idea behind this project was to develop software (a video-wiki type software) and that it would be integrated into the MediaWiki platform. This software would be an extension allowing users to add video players that would enable adding and editing any kind of media (pictures, audio, video, etc). This was a very progressive idea as media content like images and videos always tend to have a more impactful impression on our minds.

To bring more advancement into the process of making this software, Michael Dale, an open-source video developer to develop this video editing solution for the Wikipedia pages. This was announced in the Wikimania 2008 event which was also sponsored by Kaltura. The company has also established Open Video Alliance, a community where people work towards improving the video standards for the websites.

Recent Events

To develop an integrated media solution for Blackboard Learn (™), Kaltura and Kaltura Blackboard Inc collaborated in 2011. In 2014, Kaltura acquired a company called Tvinci for its OTT TV service, In the following years it partnered with several companies and also raised $50 million from Goldman Sachs in 2016. For showcasing the new OTT experience, Kaltura partnered with companies like 24i Media, Encompass, Harmonic, and Inception. The company was planning to file an IPO since 2015 and it has also turned down an offer of a $500 million acquisition to do so. But, one of the founders of the company, Shay David mentioned in 2017 that the company will go public only when the valuation of Kaltura comes close to $1 billion.

Ron Yekutiel – Co-Founder and CEO of Kaltura

Ron Yekutiel, one of the founders of Kaltura is in the position of CEO from the very beginning. In 2003, he also co-founded another company called VisualGate Systems Inc (a video surveillance company). Ron Yekutiel went to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has also co-founded and lead GPSoft Ltd before Kaltura happened.

Annasha

Zeta Global – A Marketing Tech Startup That Has Received Unicorn Status.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Zeta Global is a US-based company specializing in data-driven marketing technology. It is a new company that was founded fourteen years ago in 2007. The headquarters of the company is based in New York City and it focuses on offering multichannel marketing tools to its customers. David A. Steinberg and John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple co-founded Zeta Global. Back in 2007, it was established under the name of “XL Marketing” and its name became Zeta Global in October 2016.

About Zeta Global

Zeta’s marketing platform is used by some of the largest companies in the world to grow and retain customers at an affordable rate. When Zeta was founded, it was established with the idea that it should be able to offer solutions to a complexity arising from managing multiple vendors across various channels. All these vendors provide different points of solution like automation, customer data management (CDM), omnichannel engagement, etc. So, Zeta was founded to bring all these solutions under one roof by developing very intelligent software.

The platform of Zeta is not only about growth and bringing in more audience, but also strengthening the relationship between existing customers. Today, after Google and Facebook, Zeta Global has the third-largest dataset in the entire world that is powered by various demographics, behavioral, locational, etc factors. Zeta Global started trading publicly in 2021 at a $1.7 billion valuation. The company has a presence in 11 countries including India.

History of the Company

XL Marketing was established in 2007 and its name was changed to Zeta Interactive in 2014 followed by the current brand, Zeta Global in 2016. Within the first ten years of the company, Zeta acquired nine other companies. In 2013, it acquired the Adchemy Actions division of a parent ad tech firm, Adchemy. This acquisition helped Zeta have access to Adchemy’s machine learning-based advertising platform. Next year Zeta acquired a Boston-based company called Clicksquared that offered a SaaS-based campaign management platform.

To grow the company through more acquisitions, Zeta raised $125 million from Blackstone’s GSO Capital Partners. With this funding, Zeta mainly focused on acquiring data startup companies. Later in that year, Zeta acquired eBay’s customer relationship management division and this deal was worth $80-$90 million. Steinberg, after the acquisition, made a statement that this deal would help them become the largest customer lifecycle management platform. In August 2016, Zeta bought “Acxiom Impact”, a market automation tool for $50 million from the parent company, Acxiom. Later in that year, the company also hired a new CFO, Jarrod Yahes who was a former executive at EXL Service Holdings.

Recent Events

In 2017, Zeta hired Donald Steele as the company’s CRO. This was the first time in ten years that the company hired for this position. In a debt funding round in April 2017, Zeta raised $140 million from GPI Capital and Franklin Square Capital Partners. After this funding round, the company’s total valuation became $1.3 billion. In the same year, Zeta acquired two new companies, Boomtrain, an ML platform, and Disqus. In the past three years also Zeta acquired several ad tech companies including Temnos, Sizmek, etc. In March 2021, the company raised $222.5 million after which it announced that it will file its first IPO. Currently, it is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Awards & Accolades

It has been featured in many top-rated magazines and websites. Zeta was featured in the Forbes Most Promising Company in 2014 followed by in the list of Forbes “Top 100 Analytics Startups of 2015.” In 2017, Zeta was ranked as “Visionary” in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Hubs.

David A. Steinberg – CEO of Zeta Global

David Steinberg is famous as a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple companies including Zeta Global. David’s net worth is approximately around $750 million. In 1993, he founded his first company, Sterling Cellular from the basement of his house. And, before co-founding Zeta, there were other two companies, namely, Inphonic and CAIVIS Acquisition Corp. David went to Washington & Jefferson College.

Annasha

Annasha

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