Avekshaa plans $10-mn buyout in US

Bangalore-based Avekshaa Technologies, an architecture-led IT consulting and services startup floated by former senior executives at Infosys, is looking at acquiring either a security company or a performance and scalability testing firm in the US for $10 million (approximately Rs 45 crore).

“We have already identified the targets that could bring us clientele base and a significant reach in the US market. The acquisition should be closed in a year from now,” Gandotra, managing director and chief executive of Avekshaa said, adding the company would raise a venture capital fund to carry out the buyout deal.

Speaking to Business Standard on the sidelines of CA’s ‘only-for-the-industry’ seminar on application performance management (APM) held in Hyderabad recently, Gandotra said companies in the BFSI, telecom and retail sectors ran the risk of losing revenue, customers, reputation and time-to-market due to P-A-S-S (performance, availability, security and scalability) issues.

US-based research firm Butler Group reports that $73 billion is annually lost by the world’s industrialised nations due to poorly-performing IT applications. While the IT industry has matured on near-zero defects functional delivery, maturity on delivering P-A-S-S is still evolving. Further, current vendor offerings are inadequate to solve these problems, he said.

“We have come up with a new paradigm that will ensure IT delivery and governance will be looked at more holistically and hence will result in a more predictable and secure online world,” Gandotra, who had earlier built the technology consulting business for Infosys’ Finacle.

Avekshaa’s IT consulting and services include application architecture, performance optimisation, tuning, infrastructure engineering, validation (testing), development P-A-S-S and managed P-A-S-S.

“We are currently boot-strapped. We will look at a new round of VC investment next year (when we expect to have at least six referenceable clients), primarily to open a sales office in the US,” he added.