EXL acquires Schneider' BPO firm in Czech Republic

Nasdaq-listed EXL Service has acquired the operations of European logistics provider Schneider Logistics in the Czech Republic.

The facility currently provides transaction processing services to Schneider and its clients in Europe and the US. Schneider has 220 employees who will be transferred to EXL as part of the transaction. Analysts peg the transaction value at about $3-5 million (Rs 15-24.5 crore).

“The Czech Republic presents significant growth potential enabling our clients to leverage the labour pool there to expand and diversify their outsourcing operations,” said EXL President and CEO Rohit Kapoor.

The Olomouc facility will serve as EXL’s third outsourcing service delivery location outside of India and the Philippines. With this acquisition, the BPO will have 12 delivery centres across the globe. This win represents EXL’s third client in the transportation vertical.

Schneider Logistics is a $3.7 billion (Rs 1,800 crore) company and provides end-to-end supply chain management, warehousing, transloading, transportation management and international logistics services.

Besides, EXL has also signed a multi-year outsourcing agreement with the company. “This is a new deal for us in the transportation and logistics vertical and we will provide business processes, including European freight audit and payment, logistics engineering, carrier contracting, co-ordinating shipments and brokerage business to them,” said Kapoor. The company had been scouting for acquisitions in Europe for a long time and has about $112 million (Rs 550 crore) of cash on the balance sheet.

This is EXL’s second acquisition after it acquired Inductis, a strategy and analytics company, in 2006.