Kavveri buys Canadian company Til-Tek

Kavveri Telecom Products, manufacturer of antenna and radio frequency (RF) products for wireless industries, has acquired Til-Tek Antennae, a Canadian telecom technology company, for Canadian $2.5 million in an all-cash deal.

Prior to the acquisition, Til-Tek was a wholly owned arm of Wi-LAN, provider of broadband wireless communications products in Canada. Wi-LAN bought Til-Tek in 2000 for Canadian $23 million.

Til-Tek is coming to Kavver i's fold with a team of 50 people, including eight R&D engineers. In 2006, the company's turnover was Canadian $5 million and had incurred a loss of about $5,00,000.

"The acquisition of Til-Tek will provide us the platform to access the North American markets and to introduce Til-Tek's products in India. This will add a significant number of GSM, CDMA and WiMAX products to Kavveri's portfolio," said Shivkumar Reddy, managing director, Kavveri Telecom.

Til-Tek manufactures base stations antennas for GSM, CDMA, Wi-Fi and Wi-Max applications. The company's products are available in about 100 countries.

It has a manufacturing facility at Kemtville in Ontario, Canada. Following the acquisition, Til-Tek will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Kavveri in Canada and Kavveri intends to retain the brand name to access the overseas market.

Kavveri funded the deal through a mix of debt and internal accruals. The company has a cash reserve of close to Rs 10 crore, according to Reddy.

In the fiscal 2005-06, Kavveri had a turnover of about Rs 37 crore and for the first nine months in the ongoing fiscal, the company has recorded a revenue of about Rs 27 crore.

Kavveri owns three manufacturing plans in Karnataka. It's clients in India include Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia, Nortel, Alcatel-Lucent, Hutch, BSNL, Airport Authority of India and Idea.