8K Miles acquires US-based NexAge; 4th takeover in a year

Cloud computing services provider 8K Miles Software today announced the takeover of US-based NexAge Technologies, that specializes in the life sciences sector, for USD 3 million making it the fourth acquisition over the past one year.
San Francisco-headquartered 8K Miles Software is the only listed cloud computing player in the country and has its registered office in Chennai.
"The acquisition will strengthen our life sciences competency, apart from providing access to enterprise clients and pharma technology solutions of NexAge," 8K Miles Chairman and Chief Executive Suresh Venkatachari said.
The deal is expected to help add to the company's already strong pharma sector offering and will help build a long-term annuity-based recurring revenue model, he added.

Venkatachari said 8K Miles does not need to raise any debt to fund the acquisition and will mop up the funds from internal accruals.
Over the past 12 months, 8K Miles has snapped up three firms in the health and pharma space alone. Earlier this year, it had acquired the US-based Cintel Systems, Canada-based Mindprint and another US-based firm SERJ Solutions to strengthen its portfolio in the fast-growing life sciences sector.

He also said NexAge, the New Jersey-based firm, founded by an NRI and dealing in regulatory compliance and technology solutions in the life sciences sector, had USD 5 million in revenues last fiscal and he hopes to build on it further.

The 15-year-old NexAge works with almost all the leading international pharma players such as GSK, Pfizer, among others, while 8K Miles on its own added Novartis to its clientele recently, Venkatachari added.
Explaining the deal, which he hopes to complete by the end of this month, Venkatachari said the USD 3 million payout is part in stocks and part in cash and includes takeover of USD 8 lakh debt of NexAge.
"The USD 3 million deal is a combination of cash and stock and includes NexAge's debt of USD 800,000, apart from acquisition of intellectual property, technical solutions, client contracts and employees," 8K Miles said in a statement.

"With NexAge, we will further boost our world class CloudEzRx solutions, that has been designed to address qualification and validation compliance for applications running on the cloud," the company said.
NexAge Founder and Chairman Suresh U Kumar said, "As a boutique firm with a niche expertise and experience in the US life sciences industry, I believe being part of 8K Miles will help us take our service offerings to an entirely new level."
Shares of 8K Miles Software Services today closed at Rs 1,399 per scrip on BSE, up 0.58 per cent.