Facebook acquires Indian tech start-up Little Eye Labs
08 Jan 2014
Facebook has picked up Indian tech start-up, Little Eye Labs, which helps developers analyse and optimise their mobile apps.
The Bangalore-based company builds mobile app analysis tools for developers and testers.
The tools provide such data about the app, as how much power, data and memory that an app was using.
Little Eye Labs is the first Indian tech start-up to be acquired by the social network as it looks for ways to boost its reach to mobile users.
BBC quoted Praveen Bhadada from Zinnov consulting, which specialises in tech companies, as saying, the deal represented ''a giant step from an India start-up ecosystem perpsepctive.''
He added the number of technology start-ups setting up in India annually, had quadrupled since 2006 and the acquisition would certainly provide necessary boost to the already growing ecosystem. He added he expected to see more Silicon Valley companies seeking to acquire Indian start-ups.
According to Bhadada's estimate the deal might be valued at under $15 million.
The company was founded in August 2012 by "program analysis geeks" who wanted to build better tools for Mobile developers and were later backed by GSF and VenturEast Tenet Fund, Little Eye said in a statement.
The company released its first official version of Little Eye for Android in early April of this year, and since then it has had many Android developers and testers using Little Eye Labs to measure, analye, and optimise their app's performance.
The entire office of the firm with its seven employees would move to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
After announcement of the deal, Subbu Subramanian, engineering manager at Facebook, said, the Little Labs technology would help Facebook to continue to improve its Android codebase to make more efficient, higher-performing apps. Little Eye Labs' said in a statement on its website.
"We released our official version of Little Eye for Android in early April of this year, and since then we have had many Android developers and testers using Little Eye Labs to measure, analyze, and optimize their app's performance," the company said.
''Today, we're very excited to announce that Facebook is acquiring our company. With this acquisition, Little Eye Labs will join forces with Facebook to take its mobile development to the next level!'' Little Eye Labs co-founder Kumar Rangarajan said in a blog post on the company's website.
''From there (FB headquarters), we'll be able to leverage Facebook's world-class infrastructure and help improve performance of their already awesome apps. For us, this is an opportunity to make an impact on the more than 1 billion people who use Facebook,'' he added.
