Walmart Buys Predictive Analytics Firm Inkiru

Retail giant Walmart has announced that its technology innovation division @WalmartLabs has acquired predictive intelligence start-up Inkiru, in order to ramp up its analytics capabilities. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Inkiru gathers information from online purchases, long-term shopping records of online consumers, and information on industry e-commerce trends, analyzes it and produces reports that predict likely customer behavior, interactions, and conversion rates for promotions and marketing campaigns.

In its blog, Walmart said Inkiru's predictive analytics platform will further accelerate @WalmartLabs' big data capabilities including site personalization, search, fraud prevention and marketing.

As part of the deal, Inkiru's founder Alok Bhanot (pictured) will join @WalmartLabs as a full time advisor, while a number of data scientists and infrastructure engineers, including Vijay Raghavendra, Jaya Kolhatkar and Yitao Yao, will also join the company.

Commenting on the deal, Inkiru said: 'We are thrilled to become a part of the @WalmartLabs family today and are excited at the opportunity to continue delivering on our vision of enabling the future of commerce through the power of predictive analytics.'

Web sites: www.walmartlabs.com and www.inkiru.com .