Facebook may acquire its first Indian startup, Little Eye Labs

Update (8th Jan, 2014): Little Eye Labs has confirmed that it has been acquired by Facebook, the deal is said to be worth between $10-$15 million. For more details about the deal, check the official blog by Little Eye Labs.

Update : Little Eye’s official website is no longer accessible.

If reports are to be believed, Facebook may be gearing up to make its first ever acquisition is India. Facebook is eyeing a small startup based in Bangalore named, “Little Eye Labs” and news are that the companies are presently talks and if successful, the deal may be announced in the next few weeks.

The little known Little Eye Labs provides performance analysis and monitoring tools for Android. Android developers and testers find it quite useful in order to find and fix problems in their Android based applications.

Bangalore based Little Eye Labs was founded in only 2012 by Giridhar Murthy, a former Apple Inc. employee; Kumar Rangarajan, who earlier worked with HP and IBM, and is also Little Eye Labs present CEO; Satyam Kandula, who has worked for IBM and Motorola and Lakshman Kakkirala, who previously worked for IBM, Yahoo and Adobe. The company was funded by 2 investors, Ventureast and GSF Accelerator.

It is thanks to iSpirit, short for “Indian Software Products Industry Roundtable”, that a small startup like Little Eye Labs was able to attract one of the high profile companies like Facebook. iSpirit’s mission is to help product companies like Little Eye Labs find buyers and exposure in the global market through programs like SAI and M&A connect.

Business Standard spoke with Jay Pullar of iSpirit who explained that they are working to put Indian companies on the map by showcasing their product in the global market, Pullar said, “We are doing some match-making for Indian companies and we do actively showcase Indian companies to US buyers“. He further added that many high profile tech companies are unaware about the Indian software companies and their products, he said, “Discovery is a big issue. We were told they did not know India also had product companies. Also, some said Indian companies lacked maturity of dealing with M&A transactions and there was no ecosystem within the country to showcase product firms”

However, Facebook has not yet given any official statement on the deal. Business Standard, who first reported the news also sent an email to Little Eye Labs but is still waiting on their reply. While this remains as “yet another acquisition” for Facebook, it would be nothing short of an achievement for small Indian startups who are yet to make a mark at the global level. It would also be an achievement for iSpirit, founded in February this year and in May. They were in discussions with companies like Facebook, Cisco and VMWare, and iSpirits goal is also to bridge the gap between global entrepreneurs and small Indian software companies. iSpirit too declined to comment on the deal.Besides Little Eye Labs, Facebook also acquired Onavo in Octaber. Onavo is a popular mobile application which keeps track of the mobile data usage.

We will update this post as soon as any of the companies provide an official statement on the deal.

Source – Business Standard

Photo Credit – Thos Ballantyne/Flickr