5 rising startups in India – Oct. 19, 2016

Photo credit: yuran-78 / 123RF.

Freshdesk makes its sixth acquisition in just over a year, while another acquisition goes down in the fintech world. A social discovery platform for new parents and a solar marketplace round out our list of funded startups for the day.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk has acquired Bangalore-based social chat startup Chatimity. The acquisition is Freshdesk’s sixth in just over a year.

The Chatimity team will join Freshdesk and upgrade the SaaS company’s AI chat capabilities.

Founded in May 2011 by former Google Music Search employees Tarkeshwar Thakur and Aravind Murthy, Chatimity’s software development kit can be downloaded and integrated with an app to add a chatbot service. Its chatbot Miti uses natural language processing, state machines, and AI markup language to have thousands of conversations in real time.

Chatimity was previously incubated at Global Incubation Services (GINSERV) and was a part of Google Startup Launchpad.

Freshdesk, founded in 2011, has also acquired 1Click, Frilp, Konotor (now called Hotline), Framebench, and Airwoot.

MakeMyTrip

Photo credit: Avionale.

Travel booking portals MakeMyTrip and Ibibo have merged in a stock transaction.

The amount of the deal remained undisclosed, though ET sources have pegged it at around US$1.8 billion to US$2 billion.

MakeMyTrip will retain its branding, as will Ibibo-operated bus booking site RedBus.

Post-transaction, MakeMyTrip will own all of Ibibo.

BabyChakra

Young parent social discovery platform BabyChakra has landed series A funding from RoundGlass, a Seattle-based digital health and wellness firm.

MySun

LendingKart