Us Buy Spurs Niit

The shares of NIIT advanced further after the company's announcement that it has acquired the US-based Osprey Systems. The scrip of the software solution, education and training major closed up by 6.47 per cent to Rs 231.30 on the BSE, off from its intra-day high of Rs 234.80, after recovering from intra-day low of Rs 200. Around 9.90 lakh shares changed hands on the counter.

In the last 10 trading sessions, the NIIT scrip had shed 10 per cent - to Rs 217.25 on 26 March 2002 from Rs 240.90 on 11 March 2002. In the afternoon, NIIT announced that it has acquired Osprey Systems, the privately-held solutions provider. The acquisition is likely to generate $35 million revenues in the next three years. Osprey's revenue in calendar 2001 were over $10 million.

NIIT, however, did not give any financial details about the acquisition.

Earlier this month, NIIT announced the launch of its suite of enterprise knowledge solutions (EKS). With this, NIIT has become the first company in India to offer customised knowledge solutions for enterprises.

EKS is a comprehensive technology, content and services package, enabling organisations to maximise employee productivity and improve business results. In addition to conventional learning applications, EKS addresses areas like product launch, process dissemination, product support and induction. EKS can help cut down cycle time for sales deployment of new products by as much as 90 per cent.

Meanwhile, the recession in the global IT market has hurt NIIT's software and IT education businesses very badly since the last one year. But the company is optimistic of bagging new orders for its software division.

NIIT has also entered into a tie-up with SunGard Planning Solutions, USA, a leading business consulting firm, to offer disaster recovery and business continuity planning solutions in Asia- Pacific and India, as part of its software offering for the finance, banking and insurance sectors. The tie-up will enable NIIT to provide these services to large organisations with complex software systems.

NIIT and Click2learn, a leading provider of enterprise learning platforms, recently entered into a strategic development and technology alliance to jointly develop e-learning and knowledge solutions for the marketplace using Click2learn's Aspen platform and NIIT's knowledge services.

NIIT had also announced that it won a multi-million software maintenance, support and enhance contract from the Victorian Government of Infrastructure, Australia.

NIIT had posted an 88.40 per cent fall in net profit in the first quarter ended December 2001 to Rs 3.46 crore as compared to Rs 29.83 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. Total income for DQ 2001 declined by 30 per cent to Rs 112.84 crore from Rs 161.05 crore in the corresponding quarter of 2000.