Nadathur may exit Cades

Nadathur Holdings, an investment firm established by N S Raghavan, co-founder and former managing director of Infosys, is looking to exit Cades Digitech, a Bangalore-based product design and engineering services firm. Nadathur Holdings is understood to be holding a majority stake in Cades.

According to industry sources, Cades has a topline of around $20 million and Nadathur is looking to exit the firm at an enterprise valuation of little over $30 million. No comments were available from Nadathur Holdings.

Cades offers a complete range of design, analysis, virtual prototyping and product lifecycle management services to aerospace, automotive and heavy engineering industries.

The services, apart from design and analysis, include simulation, manufacturing design, configuration management and product data management. The company employs around 400 people.

Presently, 20-30 per cent of Cades' revenue comes from automotive and around 70 per cent from defence sector. Cades competes with the likes of Hyderabad-based Infotech Enterprises, Bangalore-based Quest besides a few others in this sector which is expected to see tremendous growth as a result of the defence offset clause of the Indian government.

According to industry information, Cades is among the companies which is on the radar to be a vendor for Airbus engineering centre in Bangalore. Cades, along with Quest, Satyam, Infosys, HCL are expected to be housed as part of a large campus being set up by Airbus in Bangalore near the new Bangalore International Airport.

Nadathur Holdings has invested in companies focussed on information technology, healthcare, life sciences and engineering services.

The company in addition to Cades has invested in MediAssist, Spice Route, Indegene Lifesystems, Metahelix besides a few others. Industry estimates that the valuations of the all the investments by Nadathur Holdings will be around $500 million.