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Capita

Capita – The Leaders of Consulting, Transformation, and Digital Services.

The way of doing things has become really easy today. For that, we can thank the internet, various communication channels as well as various outsourcing companies. These outsourcing companies are the aptest for other companies which are in need of people to work for them, without actually sitting inside the very company office. Most of the big names like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, like to hire a third party for services like customer care or backend admin operations so that they can focus on their core process. Several companies are offering such outsourcing services and are successfully doing their job. London-based Capita is one such name, which is the largest business process outsourcing company in London and is also expanding its operations worldwide.

About the Company

With more than thirty years of experience in the outsourcing industry, Capita is known as the largest company in the very field. The company came into being in 1984 and has become the largest business process outsourcing company in the UK. Capita is known for its BPO and Human Resource services and includes Back office administration, Customer service, Finance & Treasury, ICT & software as well as Corporate services in its catalog of services. The company headquarters resides in London, and over 60,000 people are working for it. Capita’s operating income as per the 2020 records was estimated to be £32.0 million, and it generated revenues worth £3,324.8 million in the FY2020.
Capita has expanded its operations to the UK, Europe, India, and South Africa and operates through three main divisions, i.e., Capita Public Service, Capita Experience, Capita Portfolio. The company’s operations are divided into various sub-departments, i.e., Consultancy division, Healthcare recruitment, Capita Financial Administration, Legal Services, Constructionline, NHS Services, Education Services, and Ministry of Defense Services, etc.

Capita

Capita Success Story

Capita was a division of CIPFA (Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy) when founded in 1984. In just three years, the division got separated from its parent company and became an independent entity in 1987. In 1991, the company went public on London Stock Exchange. In the next decade, the company saw rapid growth. For the growth, the Capita made some major acquisitions that included Ventura (2011), Team24 (20122), Fire Service College (2013), Avocis (2015), Constructionline (2015), Orange Bus (2016), NYS Corporate events and travel agency (2017), etc.
Along with the multiple acquisitions, Capita expanded to different countries, mainly in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The company also grew its operations to different industries, such as in 2006, it included financial services to its list of services, and in 2011, it added healthcare into its service area. Later, it expanded to legal services, defense as well educational sectors. The company has bagged multiple high-level projects from not only the private sector but also from the governments of different countries. It was awarded a £1.3 billion worth recruiting project from the British army in 2012. The company has shown immense growth in the past twenty years, and its consulting and recruitment wings are the most profit-earning ones.

The CEO at Capita

Jonathan is the residing CEO at Capita. He is a Geology graduate but has worked in the technology industry for past many years. Lewis received a Bachelor’s degree from Kingston University and has completed a PhD in Geology from the University of Reading.
Lewis started his career as a research fellow at Imperial College London and then, joined the Heriot-Watt University as the Geology Lecturer and Commercial Research Manager. In 1996, Lewis started to work at Landmark Graphics Corporation, where he held job posts like the Vice President of Marketing and Innovation. After working for ten years at Landmark, he became the Senior Vice President of the completions and production division at Halliburton. In 2016, Lewis became the CEO at Amec Foster Wheeler and worked for a year and a half at the company. Lewis left the job at Amec and joined as the Chief Executive Officer of Capita in December 2017.

Life360

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

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.

Life360
Image source: www.techjunkie.com

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.

Avid Technology

Avid Technology – The Pioneers of Video Editing and Multimedia Software.

The day people discovered video and film making, that too with audio, was one of the most revolutionary days for humankind. The devices to develop those videos and platforms to run those videos have come a long way and today making videos and editing them according to one needs has become really easy. There are different people behind making those complex works easy, and few include the ones who make that user-friendly editing software for videographers and other multimedia companies. Avid Technology is one such company that has been in the software industry for the last 34 years and developing dedicated software products for the multimedia industry.

About Avid Technology

Bill Warner had founded Avid Technology in August 1987. It is an American software and multimedia company, with its headquarters based in Burlington, Massachusetts, United States. The company is best known for its software and editing products for the multimedia industry, and its key products include Pro Tools, Media Composer, Sibelius, Avid VENUE, Avid NEXIS, MediaCentral, FastServe, etc. Media Composer is the flagship product of Avid Technology. In the past 34 years, Avid Technology has gained the trust of clients from all over the world, and over 1500 people are working for it globally. Aspiring artists, creative professionals, production teams, and media enterprises cover the major part of the Avid client base. As per the 2020 records, the company made annual revenues worth US$360.5 million, and its estimated operating income for 2018 was US$13.684 million.

Avid Technology
Image source: www.avid.com

The Back Story

Bill Warner, the founder of Avid Technology, was working as a marketing manager at Apollo Computer before he founded the company in 1987. After establishing the company, he started to work on the first product of the company, a non-linear editing system named Avid/1 Media Composer. The company presented the very product in April 1988 at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). Avid Technology was the first to launch such a product for video editors. The innovative idea behind the product made it the most loved product of the 90s and replaced many conventional and existing but outdated products. The very product made it way easier for the editors to edit the videos in lesser time and more effectively.
Avid Technology, in almost ten years of its inception, bagged the technical Emmy award for Outstanding Engineering Development for its unique video editing system. In 1994, Avid launched another product named Open Media Framework, and in the next ten years, it launched products like Avid Interplay and Unity Isi, software different from a video editor. Avid Technology also won an Oscar for its revolutionary Avid Film Composer at the 71st Academy Awards in March 1999.
Avid Technology saw steady but rapid growth from the very beginning. Some of the credit of its growth also go to its strategic acquisitions. These acquisitions include names like DiVA Corporation (1993), Digidesign (1994), Basys (1994), Elastic Reality, Inc. (1995), Softimage (1998), NewStar (1998), Pluto Technology (2000), iKnowledge (2002), Rocket Networks (2003), Bomb Factory (@004), Sundance Digital (2006), Blue Order Solutions AG (2010), Rocket Networ (2012), Orad Systems (2015), etc.

The CEO at Avid Technology

With over thirty years of experience, Rosica has served many well-known companies at different prominent positions. He completed his graduation from Sierra College and then went to Sacramento State University for further studies.
In 1991, Rosica joined Philips Electronics and became the Vice President and General Manager of the company’s Digital Video Systems division. Later, in 2002, he became the Senior Vice President of the Strategic and Business Development wing of Thomson. Rosica also served Grass Valley as the Executive Vice president and Chief Sales & Marketing Officer for two years. In January 2013, Rosica joined Avid Technology, and for the past nine years, served the company in various positions, including Senior Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations and Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, etc. In December 2016, he was promoted to be the President of the company, and in February 2018, Rosica became the CEO of Avid Technology.

Linx S.A.

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

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.

Linx S.A.
Image source: miro.medium.com

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.

Zensar Technologies

Zensar Technologies started as a manufacturing unit of a British original equipment firm in 1922.

IT industry is the leading one among all, and we need to admit that it has become quite impossible to work without using computer software, independent of the nature of the work. The raised demand for software and other IT services has also increased the number of companies that are available 24*7 for providing those software development services to those companies. Zensar Technologies is one of the leading IT service providers of India, which is not only offering various software products and digital engineering to Indian companies but also different enterprises across the globe. In the past thirty years, the company has expanded to over twenty countries on all the continents.
The software services from Zensar Technologies include experience design and engineering, digital engineering, application transformation, data engineering, Oracle services, SalesForce services, digital infrastructure, digital security, etc. The major service areas for the company are Hi-tech and manufacturing, Banking and financial services, Insurance Retail, and consumer services.

About the Company

Zensar Technologies is a 30 years old Indian software company. It is a publically held company and trades on the Bombay Stock Exchange as well as the National Stock Exchange of India. The company headquarters is based in Pune, India, and it is a subsidiary company of the RPG Group. It handles the software development wing for the latter. The company services include digital supply chain, artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, data management, enterprise applications, etc. Before becoming Zensar Technologies, it was known as International Computers Limited India, with a history as old as 1922. Today, over 10,000 people are working for Zensar, and as per 2021 records, the company made annual revenues worth US$494.0 million.

Zensar Technologies
Image source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

Founding Zensar Technologies

Zensar Technologies started its software development journey in 1991, as International Computers Limited (ICIL). The company history dates back to 1922 when it was just a manufacturing unit of a British original equipment manufacturing firm. In later years, the unit became ICIM (International Computers Indian Manufacture), and in 1963, it went public on the Bombay Stock Exchange. ICIM started to focus more on software starting from 1991 and closed its hardware manufacturing unit by 1999.
In 2001, ICIM received its new name, Zensar Technologies, with most of its shares being held by the RPG Group. As Zensar, the company began to provide application management services to its clients. In the following years, the company started its growth through multiple acquisitions. It acquired companies including OBT global (2005), ThoughtDigital (2007), Akibia Inc (2010), EZA (2013), Professional Access Inc (2014), Foolproof, Inc. (2016), Keystone Logic (2017), Indigo Slate(2018), Cynosure INC (2018), M3bi (2021), etc.
In 2012, about 11000 people were working for Zensar, and it started to serve globally. In fact, by 2018, Zensar had opened offices in 20 different countries in North America, the UK, various parts of Europe and South Africa. The innovative work of Zensar Technologies has won many recognitions for it, including Niche Player 2019 for managed mobility services by Gartner Magic Quadrant and BIG Innovation Award for Technology in 2021.

The CEO/Founder at Zensar Technologies

Ajay S. Bhutoria is the current CEO and the Managing Director at Zensar Technologies. Bhutoria has more than 30 years of work experience and has worked at various well-established companies on all the continents.
Bhutoria happens to be a Charted Accountant by qualification but started his career as a Solution Architect at Software Research Centre Ltd., ICAI. Later he joined TCS (Netherlands) and worked for ten years in various positions at the company. In 2002, Bhutoria switched to Cognizant and became the Global Head of Retail, Consumer Goods, Travel & Hospitality at the company. He also became the Chief Executive at L&T in 2019 and remained so for ten months. In January 2021, Bhutoria became the CEO and MD of Zensar Technologies and held the Princeton, New Jersey, United States office of the company.

kaltura

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

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.

kaltura
Image source: it.wisc.edu

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.