Dexterity eyes PE funding for expansion

Dexterity Business Analysts, which provides IT and KPO services in the market research and analytics domain, is looking at securing $8-10 million private equity fund for its expansion plans.

Dexterity's newly-appointed Chairman and CEO Anantha R Krishnan said four leading US private equity firms and the Indian subsidiaries of overseas firms had approached the Chennai-based company with their proposals.

"We have not finalised anything," Krishnan said. "We are open to offers from strategic investors as part of our growth plans."

As part of the ongoing corporate restructuring at Dexterity, the company brought in Anantha Krishnan, a former Accenture partner in the US, as chairman and CEO to augment its new business focus on marketing and customer informatics.

Dexterity founder Palanivel Kuppusamy said the company was looking at a non-linear growth model in the coming years by focusing on demand-side business processes through its targeted business solutions.

Within the ambit of marketing and customer informatics, the company will focus on marketing and customer data management, analytics, insight delivery and market research outsourcing (MRO).

According to research firm Essomar, the addressable market for marketing and customer informatics is $26 billion, Krishan said. This is over seven times the current $4 billion addressable market in the MRO space.

"A mere $120 million of the total MRO market is presently accessible to Indian companies and we will look at widening this. Our EBITDA margins are above 20 per cent and we are looking at margins close to 30 per cent in the next three years," Krishnan said.

About half of the company's revenues in the fiscal 2008 came from the retail and market research verticals, with the MELT segment contributing 20 per cent.