Facebook Officially Acquires Little Eye Labs
Facebook’s acquisition of Bangalore-based startup Little Eye Labs — which was originally reported in early December, with more details emerging later that month — is now official.
The social network’s acquisition of the creator of performance-enhancing tools for Android developers marks its first transaction of that sort in India, and Business Standard reported last month that talks between the two companies were facilitated by software product think-tank Indian Software Products Industry Round Table (iSPIRT)
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but “multiple sources” told TechCrunch last month that the deal would be valued at between $10 million and $15 million.
As previously reported, the Little Eye Labs team will join the social network’s mobile engineering team in Menlo Park, Calif.
Facebook Engineering Manager Subbu Subramanian said in a statement confirming the transaction:
I’m excited to announce that we’re acquiring Little Eye Labs, a company that produces world-class technology to help developers build more efficient products with Android. This is an opportunity to welcome some of the industry’s most talented engineers to our team in Menlo Park, Calif. At Facebook, we remain focused on producing useful and engaging mobile applications. The Little Eye Labs technology will help us continue improving our Android code base to make more efficient, higher-performing apps.
And Little Eye Labs said in a post on its website:
Today, we’re very excited to announce that Facebook is acquiring our company. With this acquisition, Little Eye Labs will join forces with Facebook to take its mobile development to the next level. This is Facebook’s first acquisition of an Indian company, and we are happy to become part of such an incredible team.
Little Eye Labs was founded about a year ago by a bunch of program-analysis geeks who wanted to build better tools for mobile developers, and it was later backed by GSF and VenturEast Tenet Fund. We released our official version of Little Eye for Android in early April of last year, and since then, we have had many Android developers and testers using Little Eye Labs to measure, analyze, and optimize their apps’ performance. We’re thankful for the opportunity we’ve had to make an impact in the development of some of the best apps out there.
