Intelligroup eyes buyouts in US, India for $18mn

US-based Intelligroup Inc, a provider of strategic IT consulting, application management, support and implementation services with its global delivery centres in Hyderabad and Bangalore, is pursuing acquisitions in the US and India, which have the right set of competencies in the business intelligence (BI), infrastructure management and testing space.

“We are in talks with a couple of companies in the US and India – the markets where is are strong in – which would complement our enterprise resource planning (ERP) offerings. As on March 31, 2009, we have cash and cash equivalents to the tune of $18 million (approximately Rs 88.2 crore), which we intend to utilise to fund the buyouts,” Intelligroup’s president and chief executive officer, Vikram Gulati, told Business Standard, while declining to draw any time line for closing the deals.

Intelligroup had, in 2007, acquired IGS Novasoft, a UK-based company, which had a good SAP implementation methodology, for $3 million (Rs 14.7 crore).

Stating that the company would stay focused on life sciences, consumer products, discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing and insurance verticals, Gulati said they were also looking at tapping the renewable energy space. “The US government’s plans to earmark a $15-billion spend every year for renewables hold maximum promise for us. We are still awaiting that money to start trickling down,” he added.

Intelligroup currently has six US clients in the renewable energy space – including Ausra, which develops and deploys utility-scale solar technologies to serve global electricity, SumPower that manufactures high-efficiency solar power solutions for residential, commercial and power plant applications, and solar technology company Miasole – together contributing about 5 per cent to its overall revenues

The US market, Gulati said, at present contributes 75 per cent, while Europe and India account for 10 per cent and 5 per cent respectively and the rest flowing in from other geographies like Japan. “We clearly want to derisk the US. Europe will grow faster this year,” he added.

Intelligroup, which follows a January-to-December financial year, reported a 19.7 per cent decrease in its revenues to $30.9 million (around Rs 151.41crore) for the first quarter of 2009, as compared to $38.5 million (Rs 188.65 crore) in Q1 of 2008. “Though it is clear that the full year 2009 will be a challenging period with revenue levels below those in 2008, we are on track to improve our operational efficiency and reduce costs to best manage our margins,” Gulati said.