Microsoft has acquired Paris, France-based Capptain, a company that helps mobile and Web app developers increase the ROI of their application business through response marketing, advanced analytics and targeting, and other user engagement and retention-boosting techniques.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but, according to a press release, Capptain's technology will be integrated into Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. Read Microsoft's blog post here.
Through Azure 'Mobile Services', Microsoft already offers developers and publishers a scalable backend that can be used to power apps on any platform, whether it be iOS, Android, Windows or Mac.
Capptain, too, is big on cross-platform - all of its features are available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, HTML5, BlackBerry, WebOS and Samsung's Smart TV. Likely, the French company will work on boosting the capabilities of the Azure platform for mobile app developers - because that's where it's happening these days and Microsoft would be foolish not to shoot for a bigger piece of the pie.
This is how the Azure team of the US company puts it in a blog post:
"Capptain will bring a vital new element to our end-to-end story for mobile app development – real-time user and push analytics.
With Capptain’s solution, organizations can analyze customer and employee behavior in real-time, and respond by pushing targeted messages, announcements, information or offers. This information empowers organizations to provide personalized, specific content to their customers in order to maximize business opportunities."
Capptain, formerly known as UBIKOD (under which name the company was started in 2008), has raised approximately $2 million in funding (seed + Series A in 2012) to date.
Capptain is a portfolio company of Moscow, Russia-based Runa Capital, which actively invests in startups from across Europe and also recently bagged another exit, of portfolio company StopTheHacker (acquired by CloudFlare) to be more precise.
In a statement, Runa Capital managing partner Dmitry Chikhachev - who sits on Capptain's board - says France will remain a focus for the VC firm's investment activities thanks to its "good engineering/scientific education" and "culture of innovation".
Also read: Everything you wanted to know about tech exits in Europe: tech.eu M&A report – Q1 2014
Featured image credit: pcruciatti / Shutterstock
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