EDB buys stake in Bangalore firm

The majority stake acquisition, which comes a year after negotiations commenced, has been billed as a win-win situation for both the companies: While EDB gains to strengthen its long-term global sourcing strategy by leveraging its offshore and sourcing from India, Span Infotech promoters hope to scale up their software services operations and access new markets.

EDB, with an annual turnover of $ 1.6 billion and an employee base of 6,000, has its operational base in Scandinavia and an offshore location in Ukraine.

A major player in the Nordic IT market and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange, some of EDB's major clients include Volvo, Sony Ericsson, Swedbank and Astra Zeneca. Span Infotech, which was established in 1993, has expertise in custom applications development, eb-based technologies, mainframes business intelligence and wireless applications development.

With 630 employees, Span Infotech's has specialised in finance and insurance verticals, besides focusing on independent software vendors (ISVs).

Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, EDB's senior vice-president (business development) Tom Scharning said: "A lot of our clients in the telecom and manufacturing sectors insisted that our global delivery should be based out of India. Following this, we started discussions with about 40 Indian companies and finally zeroed in on Span. This will help us clear the order backlog of $ 2.7 billion."

Though it has acquired majority stake, EDB said it will allow Span to grow on its own.

Span's co-founder and managing director G L Pradeep said EDB's entry will help the company carry out new tasks.

"We are readying infrastructure to go to the next level of business," Pradeep said while detailing plains to build a facility on a four-acre plot at Mysore.

By 2010, Span plans to increase to employee base to 2,000 persons from the current 630 persons and turnover to Rs 106 crore from the present Rs 50 crore.