European PCB major acquires design firm

Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik (AT&S), the Euro 330 million PCB (printed circuit board) manufacturer based out of Austria, has acquired Bangalore-based ECAD Technologies for close to Rs 8 crore.

ECAD Technologies specialises in design services for PCB manufacturers.

ECAD has a topline of around Rs 5 crore and has margins in the range of 25 per cent. SIDBI Venture Capital Fund and Karnataka IT Venture Fund have exited in this deal which gives AT&S close to 90 per cent control in ECAD.

SIDBI VC Fund and KITVEN had invested Rs 2 crore and Rs 1 crore respectively and have got 150 per cent returns from this exit. For AT&S, this is the second acquisition in the country after having acquired a PCB manufacturing unit from Indal in Nanjangud near Bangalore.

Said S L N Murthy, founder & director, ECAD: "We are engaged mainly in design, simulation and testing of high end PCBs used in critical applications. We will continue to operate on a similar fashion after this acquisition like we were earlier with no change in management. We have customers such as Texas Instruments, National Semiconductors, Bharat Electronics, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, Indian Space Research Organisation besides many others. This acquisition will give us further leverage to tap into AT&S client base."

A spokesperson for AT&S said that the acquisition makes perfect sense for them as they are seeking to expand their base in Asian markets.

"In addition to the manufacturing unit in India which we are expanding, our Chinese facility is also seeing rapid expansion. The element of design for such massive expansion is critical and ECAD was a good bet for us," he noted.

With clients like Flextronics, Motorola, Nokia, Siemens, Elcoteq among AT&S customers and with a majority of them having their own manufacturing plants in India, it was only logical for AT&S to accelerate its investments in India, which is fast turning into a growing base for electronics and hardware manufacturing.