After Live.ai, Flipkart acquires Israeli startup Upstream Commerce

Soon after Flipkart acquired speech recognition startup Live.ai, the Walmart-owned e-commerce marketplace gave hint to acquire more startups in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Living up to its word, the Indian e-commerce major has acquired an Israel-based analytics startup Upstream Commerce. The move will help Flipkart to deliver real-time pricing and product analytics to its seller partners.

Following the acquisition, Flipkart will absorb the 20-member team of Upstream Commerce team. However, the team will work remotely from Israel. Flipkart is planning to have  global center for future data science work in the Middle East country.

The integration of new technology onto the Flipkart platform will take a few months to complete, reports ET.

Founded in 2010 by Amos Peleg and Shai Geva and backed by YL Ventures, Upstream Commerce provides a cloud solution that uses advanced artificial intelligence, semantic analysis, and data mining technology to enable online retailers to track and analyse competitor pricing and assortment.

The startup serves online merchants, consumer-product manufacturers, buyers and professionals, merchandising, executives, and marketing and sales managers.

The development comes at a time when the synergy between India and Israel is growing as far as investments and strategic collaborations are concerned. Right from the government to industrialist Mukesh Ambani and startups across the country have had emphasised on learning technology prowess from Israel. 

Flipkart's bid for Upstream would eventually inspire several mid and large scaled Indian companies to engage with Israeli startups, who are working in deep tech such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Meanwhile, India is going through a massive shortage of talents in aforementioned technologies. Corporations including startups already have been lamenting on lack of skilled workforce while developing products around them. Israel could be one of the helping hands to cope with talent crunch.