Mergers News: 28/7/09

HCL INKS PACT WITH CHINESE EBAOTECH CORPORATION
New Delhi
The Economic Times  Financial Chronicle The Financial Express  DNA (Mumbai edition)  

IT services provider HCL Technologies has entered into a strategic alliance with the China-based eBaoTech Corporation, a provider of software and services for life and general insurance industry.

Under the agreement, HCL would work with eBaoTech to identify fitment of eBaoTech's products in select geographies, HCL said in a statement today.

Moreover, the companies together expect to help insurance carriers and intermediaries adopt IT solutions that would allow them to gain better process efficiencies in a cost effective manner, it added.

"We look forward to working with HCL to create significant and tangible value for insurance industry to become much faster, better, most cost efficient, and more scalable," eBaoTech CEO Woody Mo said.

Premkumar S, Corporate Officer, (Global Business Sponsor - Financial Services) HCL Technologies, said, "We are very excited about our partnership with eBaoTech as part of our product partnerships portfolio and see a lot of potential across major focus markets. As one of the leading end-to-end specialist insurance solution providers in the industry, HCL is equipped to fulfill the industry requirements by combining with eBaoTech's insurance system software capabilities."

2ERGO BUYS INDIAN MOBILE MARKETING CO
Mumbai
The Economic Times

Aim-listed 2ergo, a global provider of mobile marketing, mCRM and media solutions, has entered the Indian market with the acquisition of Activemedia Technologies (AMT), one of India’s top mobile marketing and value-added service providers.

The UK-headquartered AMT is a global provider of mobile ticketing and couponing services, which include the longest-running m-promo in the world, “Orange Wednesdays”, the cinema-ticket promotion for mobile operator Orange that made Wednesdays the most popular cinema going week in the UK. The campaign ran in India as “Hutch Tuesdays”.

Chris Brassington, group MD, 2ergo, said: “The Indian mobile market holds vast potential for us with 10 percent of users choosing internet-enabled mobile phones in a technology leap that forgoes computers in favour of straight to mobile data.” In India, AMT serves mobile operators, including Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance and Tata. Blue-chip clients include British Airways, P&G, ABN Amro, ING, Hyundai and Western Union.

Raj Singh, ED of AMT, added: “The combined offering will be very compelling for retailers, mobile network operators, FMCG, entertainment and media companies.” AMT has also appointed Ramesh Krishnan, a veteran of AT&T, Lucent, Avaya and VeriSign, as COO.

WEB SPIDERS PICKS 51% STAKE IN NETWINGS INFO
Kolkata
Business Standard

Web Spiders (India) Pvt Ltd, a Kolkata-based software consulting firm, has acquired 51 percent stake in Netwings Infotech Pvt Ltd (NIPL), which is engaged in delivering fibre optic networking and GIS solutions.

The development marks the company’s entry into systems integration, which was earlier only into manufacturing and software development. Another company, Supreme & Co Pvt Ltd, manufacturer of fibre optic, telecom and power equipment, has a 50 percent shareholding in Web Spiders.

Siddharth Jhunjhunwala, CEO, Web Spiders, explained, “With this acquisition, we have created a synergistic end-to-end platform from manufacturing to software and systems integration for our customers”. He, however, declined to give the value of the 51 percent stake. Jhunjhunwala added that the Rs250 crore Group is now bullish on the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts in the power sector, together with e-Governance and large activity projects in Geographic Information System (GIS) and weather services and fibre optic backbone for industrial automation.

Netwings, for example, has already worked with Reliance Big FM's Mumbai station for weather updates and forecasts, D Mallick, CEO of the company informed. The group targets to grow by 45-50 percent in terms of revenue this fiscal. The Group is also looking at overseas acquisitions in areas of web-based software development and has set aside around $ 5 million for the same.

INTELLIGROUP EYES BUYOUTS IN US, INDIA FOR $18MILLION
K Rajani Kanth, Chennai/ Hyderabad
Business Standard

US-based Intelligroup Inc, a provider of strategic IT consulting, application management, support and implementation services with its global delivery centres in Hyderabad and Bangalore, is pursuing acquisitions in the US and India, which have the right set of competencies in the business intelligence (BI), infrastructure management and testing space. “We are in talks with a couple of companies in the US and India – the markets where is are strong in – which would complement our enterprise resource planning (ERP) offerings. As on March 31, 2009, we have cash and cash equivalents to the tune of $18 million (approximately Rs 88.2 crore), which we intend to utilise to fund the buyouts,” Intelligroup’s president and chief executive officer, Vikram Gulati said, while declining to draw any time line for closing the deals.

Intelligroup had, in 2007, acquired IGS Novasoft, a UK-based company, which had a good SAP implementation methodology, for $3 million (Rs 14.7 crore).

Stating that the company would stay focused on life sciences, consumer products, discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing and insurance verticals, Gulati said they were also looking at tapping the renewable energy space. “The US government’s plans to earmark a $15-billion spend every year for renewables hold maximum promise for us. We are still awaiting that money to start trickling down,” he added.

Intelligroup currently has six US clients in the renewable energy space – including Ausra, which develops and deploys utility-scale solar technologies to serve global electricity, SumPower that manufactures high-efficiency solar power solutions for residential, commercial and power plant applications, and solar technology company Miasole – together contributing about 5 percent to its overall revenues

The US market, Gulati said, at present contributes 75 percent, while Europe and India account for 10 percent and 5 percent respectively and the rest flowing in from other geographies like Japan. “We clearly want to derisk the US. Europe will grow faster this year,” he added.

Intelligroup, which follows a January-to-December financial year, reported a 19.7 percent decrease in its revenues to $30.9 million (around Rs 151.41crore) for the first quarter of 2009, as compared to $38.5 million (Rs 188.65 crore) in Q1 of 2008. “Though it is clear that the full year 2009 will be a challenging period with revenue levels below those in 2008, we are on track to improve our operational efficiency and reduce costs to best manage our margins,” Gulati said.