KOCHI: In a major boost to Kerala-grown IT industry, New York Stock Exchange-listed Nielsen Holdings has announced the acquisition of Kochi-based Visual IQ, a 10-year-old firm which employs 180 people, mostly at its facility at Infopark, Kakkanad.The terms of the deal, which is expected to be finalised in October, have not been disclosed. Visual IQ, which has offices in New York, London, San Francisco, Boston and Munich, is co-founded by Manu Mathew and Anto Chittilappilly. Manu is a graduate of the College of Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, from where he holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering.
Anto is a graduate from Thrissur Engineering College, from where he a holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering and has certification in business communications from Harvard University.This is the second mega-deal involving a Kerala IT firm in recent times. Last year, Kochi-based Profoundis Labs was acquired by American software provider FullContact.
Manu, who is the CEO at Visual IQ, said, “Our team is excited to be joining the Nielsen family as we integrate our capabilities with theirs, and provide increased value to clients and a more powerful combined solution to the industry as a whole.”The acquisition of Visual IQ will improve Nielsen’s ability to automatically ingest and process large datasets as well as provide Nielsen with access to more proprietary big data.
About Visual IQ
Visual IQ is a leading independent provider of multi-touch attribution modelling of advertising on digital platforms that help improve ROI (return on investment) for brand marketers. Nielsen will acquire Visual IQ’s industry-leading MTA software platform.