@Walmart Labs Acquires PunchTab

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s @Walmart Labs continued its buying spree with the acquisition of PunchTab, a Silicon Valley company known for building the software platform to help Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club better understand and engage with customers.

In addition to acquiring PunchTab’s technology, six PunchTab technologists will join @Walmart Labs.

“We’ll use the technology to enhance our existing customer relationship management tools — the technology behind how we reach customers across e-mail, on our Web sites, on mobile phones and in our physical stores,” Jeremy King, head of @Walmart Labs, said in a blog post. “This marks @Walmart Labs’ 15th acquisition in the last four years as we continue to add some of the best talent [from] Silicon Valley and around the world.”

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PunchTab’s first project will be to use its software platform to enhance the way Sam’s Club tailors offers to it members in clubs, via the retailer’s mobile app and at samsclub.com. “Like most of the technology we build at @Walmart Labs, we plan to apply what we build for Sam’s Club to Wal-Mart’s other businesses, including walmart.com,” King said.

PunchTab was founded in 2011 by Mehdi Ait Oufkir, who will be joining @Walmart Labs. Prior to founding PunchTab, Mehdi was an early member of yousendit.com, helping to scale the company to 18 million registered users. Mehdi and the five software engineers from PunchTab will join the customer acquisition and retention team at @Walmart Labs.

Some of @Walmart Labs’ prior acquisitions include Vudu, a streaming video service that gives users access to movies and TV shows anytime on almost any Internet-enabled device; OneRiot, technology that analyzes social media signals from networks such as Twitter and Facebook; Grabble, an e-receipts solution; Torbit, a cloud-based Web site accelerator service; Yumprint, a recipe discovery and meal-planning service provider; Stylr, a mobile app that allows shoppers to find the clothes they want in nearby stores, and Luvocracy, an online community that helps consumers discover products recommended by people they trust.