Facebook buys India mobile ads startup
Facebook Inc. has acquired a technology startup in India as the largest social networking service seeks to bolster its presence among mobile-device users.
Facebook bought Little Eye Labs, which creates tools that Android application developers can use to analyze and enhance efficiency of mobile apps, the Bangalore, India, company said on its website.
Financial terms weren’t disclosed for Facebook’s first purchase in India and Carson Dalton, the India spokesman of Menlo Park company, declined to comment on the terms of the deal.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is stepping up efforts to help Facebook, the top seller of online advertisements after Google Inc., generate more of the company’s ad revenue from mobile. Spending by U.S. companies on ads designed for mobile devices is expected to account for 23 percent of digital advertising expense in 2013, up from 12 percent in the previous year, according to research firm EMarketer Inc.
“If this company helps you analyze the mobile apps and usage patterns of users, it would enable doing data analytics. That is extremely important information for advertisers,” said Urmil Shah, a Mumbai analyst at Kim Eng Securities Pvt. “That is ultimately where Facebook would make money.”
Little Eye Labs, whose entire team will move to Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, was set up about a year ago, according to the company.
Founded by Kumar Rangarajan, it received financing from angel investors GSF India and VenturEast Tenet Fund, according to Little Eye’s website.
The company is “focused on producing useful and engaging mobile apps,” Subbu Subramanian, Facebook’s Bangalore engineering manager, said in an e-mail. “The Little Eye Labs technology will help us to continue improving our Android codebase to make more efficient, higher-performing apps.”