ICRA OPEN TO ACQUISITIONS, AIMS TO BOOST NON-RATING REVENUE
Kolkata, June 22, 2009
The Economic Times The Times of India
Rating major, ICRA has said it is open to acquisitions in the KPO and IT space to boost its non-rating revenues in the coming years.
"We are open to more acquisitions in KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) and IT space if we get right offers. In March, we had acquired US-based IT company of Sapphire Group through our analytics subsidiary," ICRA vice-chairman and group CEO P K Choudhury said.
Sapphire was a USD 1.5 million revenue company and was acquired for around USD 1 million.
Choudhury said the company is aiming to increase its non-rating revenues to 50 percent of the total group earnings by 2011-12.
"Currently, rating revenues are 60 percent and 40 percent (comes) from non-rating activities," he said.
ICRA group revenue for 2008-09 was Rs 149.81 crore, of which rating services was Rs 88.51 crore.
ICRA is not aiming for any big-ticket acquisition and is eyeing value-based companies in knowledge domain.
The consolidation with Sapphire would be complete by September, ICRA Techno Analytics Ltd (ICTEAS) Managing Director Prateep Guha said.
ICRA would shift development activities of Sapphire in Egypt and Russia to its Kolkata office.
"We are planning to introduce business intelligence software branded as Turf View Business Intelligence for both Indian and overseas market," Guha said.
This product would cater to sectors like pharma, FMCG and consumer durables and offer value on the data captured by the ERP solutions.
ICRA group's non-rating revenues mostly come from three subsidiaries, ICRA Management Consultancy Services Ltd, ICRA Techno Analytics Ltd (ICTEAS) and ICRA Online.
Choudhury, speaking about the rating of corporates in the current economic scenario said, now downgrading had reduced, "but it will be another year before we can see substantial upgrades of ratings".
INFY EYES MID-TICKET BPOS IN US, EUROPE
Surabhi Agarwal, New Delhi, June 22, 2009
The Financial Express
After the failed effort to acquire UK-based SAP consulting major, Axon Plc, which was eventually bagged by HCL Technologies for ?441 million in December last year, India?s second largest software exporter, Infosys Technologies is looking at a string of mid-ticket acquisitions in the US and the European market. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is one of the areas where the company is actively scouting for acquisitions.
?BPO is one of our target areas for acquisition. We are also looking at companies in the consulting and the infrastructure management space,? said a company official.
However, the official added that the company was not looking at big-ticket acquisitions and has an outlay of $100-$200 million for deals in each of these services. Infosys had cash and cash equivalents of over $2 billion as on March 2009.
According to sources in the company, Infosys had set a target of generating over $1-billion revenue from its BPO unit. However, the current economic crisis made its plans goes awry. Infosys BPO, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys Technologies, reported revenues of $316.2 million for the financial year 2008-09.
?Infosys BPO is strong in the telecom and financial services verticals. Therefore, companies which can bolster our offering in this space and have a unique platform or IPR to offer transaction based services will be a good fit,? said the official. In an effort to derive better margins and reduce the dependency on headcount, majority of India?s top BPOs are trying to move away from voice-based offerings as they increase their focus on transaction-based services and experiment with newer models of pricing like output-based pricing.
However, Infosys is not looking at the domestic market for acquisitions. ?India-based entities can only give us scale, which we can easily generate by upping our headcount. We are looking at companies that can give us the front-end in terms of markets and clients. The offshore and the offshore mix can later be re-balanced,? he added.
In an interview earlier this month, Amitabh Chaudhry, CEO of Infosys BPO had said the company is looking at buying outsourcing firms in the US and Europe
No comments:
Post a Comment