#kima labs

[ziggytek]

Groupon has recently acquired Kima Labs, the company behind mobile payment app TapBuy and mobile bar code reading app Barcode Hero. More » via ziggytek.com

[adambesvinick]

Is Groupon Becoming a Tech Company?

After all the drama around Groupon's IPO, it seems like the company has remained relatively quiet and there hasn't been too much excitement around the stock. Since its IPO, GRPN has gone as high as $31.14 per share and as low as $14.85, and now the share price has settled at $20.26. And as I've mentioned here previously, I don't really consider Groupon to be a tech company and didn't think their IPO should (would is a different story) affect the IPO market for tech companies after them. Additionally, Groupon's main competitor, LivingSocial, hasn't been too active either. Both companies just seem to be humming along and relatively content to be settled in to the market that they essentially created. That was up until the last week and a half or so. In that time span, Groupon has announced three acquisitions: Adku, Hyperpublic, and Kima Labs. While all three startups will contribute to Groupon in different ways, they all will bolster the daily deal site's technology, an area that has been severely lacking.

On February 6, Groupon announced the acquisition of Adku, an e-commerce data company. Adku's technology optimizes a person's shopping experience by providing product suggestions on sites like Amazon, eBay, and Zappos. Groupon has long been criticized for not providing targeted daily deals (bikini waxes and pole dancing classes in Boston aren't exactly what I'm looking for), and this acquisition should go a long way towards helping Groupon and its merchants send the right deals to the right people. Meanwhile, just yesterday Groupon announced the acquisitions of Hyperpublic and Kima Labs. Hyperpublic is a particularly interesting acquisition as it is really a pure technology / data play. The NYC-based startup creates databases of local info and makes them available to developers for free and will certainly help Groupon figure out how to target customers by location, an essential feature for services like Groupon Now. Lastly, the acquisition of Kima Labs should better enable Groupon's mobile payments capabilities.

Although I don't think that any one of these acquisitions on its own is particularly game changing for Groupon, I do believe that all three together can make a significant impact. If nothing else, it's a step in the right direction as Groupon begins to leverage data and mobile in a more effective and productive way, as opposed to merely being a tech-enabled marketing company for SMBs as they are now.