Business mergers and Acquisition, Startups, Cisco - Current Affairs Questions and Answers

ANSWER: Both a and b

Explanation:
Union Cabinet on 22^nd March 2017 approves the proposal to establish the Fund of Funds of Startups or FFS.

Union Cabinet in 2016 approved the proposal to establish a Fund of Funds for Startups with total corpus of INR 10,000 crore.

AIFs supported by FFS should invest at least twice the amount of contribution received from FFS in Startups.

If the account committed for a startup has not been released before a startup ceases, the balance funding can continue thereafter.

Operating expenses out of the FFS to the extent of 0.50 percent of the commitments made to AIFs and outstanding.

Operating expenses include carrying due diligence, legal and technical appraisal, meeting of Venture Capital Investment Committee etc.

Operating expenses will be debited to fund at the beginning of each half year on April and October 1.

Fund of Funds for Startups was approved by Union Government in 2016.

Fund of Funds for Startups is being managed by SIDBI.

FFS contributes to SEBI registered Alternative Investment Funds that may go up to a maximum of 35 percent of the corpus of the AIF concerned.

ANSWER: Lyft

Explanation:
Ride sharing app aggregator Lyft has acquired Pune based FinitePaths for an undisclosed amount.

Trail Answers, the app created by FinitePaths will be shut down and cofounders will join the Lyft team.

FinitePaths was set up in November 2015 with the move to leverage technology to enable people to take better decisions.

The app Trail Answers enabled answers to questions using social, contextual and local signals.

The company has been founded by Vinay Kakade and Balaji Raghavan, who worked with Amazon and Google respectively before setting up the firm.

The cofounders will now work with Lyft to help in expanding its infrastructure and services.

Following this acquisition, the company has stopped signing up new users and will shut down the app over the next two weeks.

Lyft: Know More

• Founded: 2012
• CEO: Logan Green (Jun 2012)
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
• Founders: Logan Green, John Zimmer

ANSWER: Umbrella

Explanation:
International networking giant CISCO on 13^th Feb 2017 launched a cloud based secure internet gateway that provides visibility and protection against threats wherever users work.

This gateway called Umbrella provides safe access to internet everywhere users go.

The secure internet gateway helps users even if they are off VPN and provides first line of visibility and defence regardless of where the users connect from or to.

Secure internet gateway, Cisco Umbrella, can protect today's enterprise and beyond as mobility increases and new cloud services are adopted.

Umbrella stops current and emergent threats over all ports and protocols for the most comprehensive coverage.

It blocks access to malicious domains, URLs, IPs, and files before a connection is ever established or a file downloaded.

By combining "Umbrella" with CISCO Cloudlock's Cloud Access Security Broker organisations can identify which SaaS apps are being used and enforce policies to block risky or inappropriate apps.

"Umbrella" can integrate with existing systems, including security appliances, intelligence platforms or feeds, and custom, in-house tools.

This enables users to extend protection for devices and locations beyond the perimeter.

Umbrella' resolves over 100 billion internet requests every day and correlates this live data with over 11 billion historical events.

This is analysed to identify patterns, detect anomalies, and create models to automatically uncover attacker infrastructure being staged for the next threat.

About CISCO

• Type: Public
• Traded as: NASDAQ: CSCO; NASDAQ-100 Component; DJIA Component; S&P 100 Component; S&P 500 Component
• Industry: Networking equipment
• Founded: December 10, 1984, San Francisco, California
• Founders: Leonard Bosack, Sandy Lerner
• Headquarters: San José, California
• Area served: Worldwide
• Executive Chairman: John Chambers
• CEO: Chuck Robbins

ANSWER: Hubballi

Explanation:
The Deshpande Foundation, the philanthropy arm of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande, will launch the country’s largest start-up incubation centre at Hubballi.

The foundation aims to promote entrepreneurship in India’s tier-II and tier-III cities.

It is investing INR 30 crore in the centre, to be opened this September and able to seat 1,200 people at any point.

Housing a makers lab, a 3D printing lab, hardware labs and an IOT lab, the centre will try to attract entrepreneurs from across sectors and any background, to build new-age solutions.

A ‘sandbox’ location has been created to allow entrepreneurs to test and nurture their ideas into businesses.

His foundation has set up two more sandboxes. One is in Varanasi, the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and another in neighbouring Telangana.

The Hubballi centre will continue to be funded by the Deshpande Foundation.

About Deshpande Foundation

• Deshpande Foundation is a non-governmental organization founded in 1996 by Gururaj and Jaishree Deshpande.
• Founded: 1996
• Headquarters: Massachusetts
• Type: Non-governmental organization

ANSWER: Indore

Explanation:
In a first, a special incubation centre for start-ups working on environment conservation is being set up in Indore.

Three entrepreneurs each from Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Indore have been finalised to start operations at the centre from December 22.

Located at the Govindram Sekseriya Institute of Management and Research premises, it aims to provide a platform to budding entrepreneurs working in the field of solar energy, biogas, biomass and other environment related subjects.

This incubation centre is part of the MP Incubation and Start-up scheme 2016. We have not taken any fund from the government.

The incubation centre will not only help the entrepreneurs but also inspire the existing college students to come up with their ventures.

Out of the 62 applications from across the country a special panel of 50 mentors specialised in the fields of energy conversation, three projects were selected after analysis and evaluation.

The mentors will have 6 - 8 per cent equity share in the startups.

The incubation centre has tied up with 10 investors across the country. The team of experts include solar energy specialist Deepak Gadhia, Ganjana Joshi and Dipal Chandra Barua among others.

ANSWER: IBM

Explanation:
General Electric on 15th Nov 2016 acquired two tech startups to build the AI capability to compete with IBM’s Watson product

• Acquisitions of Bit Stew Systems and Wise.io will expand its Predix platform for industrial internet applications, which connects big machines such as power plants and aircraft engines to databases and analytical software.
• Terms of the deals weren't publicly disclosed.
• Wise.io is based in Berkeley California and has advanced machine learning technology
• AI has a branch called machine learning which allows computers to adapt to new data without fresh programming
• Bit Stew is a Vancouver based Canadian firm backed by GE’s venture capital arm
• It applies machine learning to large data sets associated with utilities, aviation, oil and gas production and manufacturing, according to the company's web site.
• IBM’s Watson is among the better known AI systems which enables computers to perform intelligent actions such as recognising voices and making decisions

ANSWER: CISCO

Explanation:
The state education department of Rajasthan has partnered with US based technology firm CISCO to promote digital learning across the state using virtual digital room solutions.

• Initiative aims to enhance the quality of education through digital learning for academia to connect, collaborate and share content across 12 centres of State Institute for Education Management and Training.
• CISCO has committed to 5000 man hours of training and partnered with the Rajasthan government to establish Digital Learning Solution Rooms which will deploy virtual digital classrooms across 12 institutes as part of the ongoing social initiative programme in Rajasthan.
• Partnership covers various initiatives of digitising the state which include projects on urban development and acceleration of local innovation.
• Education is the most potent catalyst of economic empowerment as highly skilled workforce and building local capacity will speed up digital transformation in the state.
• Digital learning initiative will result in qualitative and quantitative enhancement of training capabilities.

ANSWER: None of the above

Explanation:
NYSE listed technology firm Synnex Corporation has acquired Bengaluru based BPO firm Minacs for USD 420 million in a deal underlining consolidation in the business process management space.

• Buyout also showcases the efforts in the BPM sector to gravitate towards higher end services and capabilities like analytics
• PE firms CX Partners and Capital Square Partners which purchased Minaca from the Aditya Birla Group are exiting the firm.
• This acquisition is Synnex’s second biggest in India.
• In 2013, it had acquired BPO firm IBM Daksh for USD 505 million.

ANSWER: Forever 21

Explanation:
Kumar Mangalam Birla led Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail has acquired Indian business of international clothing brand “Forever 21” from Diana Retail Pvt Ltd, the US based company’s local franchise partner for over INR 175 crore or USD 26 million.

• Transaction involved acquisition of the Forever 21 Undertaking of Diana Retail from July 1 through business transfer agreement and not share transfer.
• Consideration for acquisition is USD 26 million
• Forever 21 will form part of the Madura Fashion & Lifestyle division
• Forever 21 is among the fastest growing fashion retailers in the world with a network of more than 700 stores worldwide.

ANSWER: HelloTech

Explanation:
Los Angeles-based startup HelloTech and rival in-home tech support company Geekatoo said that they had merged, in a sign of consolidation in the hotly competitive on-demand sector.

• HelloTech will combine its network of about 150 college students who provide on-demand tech repair to Southern California consumers with Geekatoo's US network of about 5,000 technicians, the companies said in a joint statement.
• The merger connects HelloTech with Geekatoo's national market and provides Geekatoo with more access to venture capital funding, HelloTech co-founder Richard Wolpert said in an interview.
• HelloTech, which launched about a year ago, has raised $17 million from investors, while 5-year-old Geekatoo has raised close to $3 million.