BackOffice Associates mulls buyout in India

US-based BackOffice Associates, a Goldman Sachs-backed company providing data migration and information governance solutions, is contemplating acquiring a company in the enterprise performance management (EPM) space in India for between $5 million and $10 million, said Krish Datta, chief executive officer (Asia-Pacific, Japan and West Asia).

“We want to acquire an Indian company that has competencies either in EPM or data as we want to stay aligned in what we do. Though I am not in a rush, I don’t rule it out in the next 24 months,” he said.

The over $140-million company, with delivery centres in Hyderabad and Bangalore, had acquired SAP data services consultancy Entota Limited in July 2012, and Canada-based Headwall Software Inc in December 2013 for undisclosed amounts.

“We are in the process of integrating Entota’s product, which has an auto-generation code for validations on data services environment. Leveraging Headwall’s resources based out of Canada, we are also working on offering data quality on mobile devices, which should be launched sometime next quarter,” Datta said.

Stating that the company was trying to position itself in the Indian market since the last two years but saw limited success as awareness around quality data was not very high here, he said while companies in the US and other advanced markets tend to spend around 20 per cent of an ERP or Oracle project on data, it was only in the range of 10 per cent to 15 per cent in India.