Wipro buys Canway Corporation

The consumer care business of software provider Wipro Ltd has made its second overseas acquisition this year with a deal to buy a South African brand.

Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting has bought Canway Corporation, which markets its offerings in categories such as bath & shower, hand creams, fragranced body sprays, and kids’ products through brands such as Oh So Heavenly, Iwori and IQ. The deal amount was not disclosed.

Canway sells its Oh So Heavenly brand items through Clicks, one of the leading health and beauty retailers in South Africa. Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting’s South African acquisition comes after the consumer care business acquired Filipino personal care firm Splash. With the purchase of Splash came brands including SkinWhite (body lotions) and Vitress (hair conditioner).

Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting has made a number of overseas acquisitions. In 2016, it bought Chinese fast-moving consumer goods company Zhongshan Ma Er Daily Products Ltd in an all-cash deal. Its first acquisition was in 2003, when it bought Glucovita, a glucose brand from Hindustan Unilever. In subsequent years, it added Chandrika (2004), Unza (2007), Yardley - Middle East, North Africa and Australasia (2009), Yardley UK (2012), and LD Waxsons Group (2012). Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting has also launched a venture capital fund called Wipro Consumer Care–Ventures.

SHL to acquire Aspiring Minds

US-based talent evaluation company SHL announced its plans to acquire Gurgaon based job credentialing platform Aspiring Minds for an undisclosed amount. The deal is expected to close in November and cost somewhere between $80-$100 Mn largely all-in-cash.

Through this acquisition, SHL plans to infuse Aspiring Minds’ artificial intelligence (AI) technology with SHL’s portfolio and leverage the “rigorous science to enable the technical, emerging and leadership talent required” for over 10K customers. Some of the big names in its companies clientele include e-commerce giant Amazon, the telecom operator Airtel, IT company Wipro and US industrial conglomerate Honeywell.

Founded in 2008 by Himanshu Aggarwal and Varun Aggarwal, Aspiring Minds is an employability evaluation and certification company that helps institutions and companies hire the right candidate. The company also allows candidates to take employability test to find the ‘right’ jobs through its flagship product AMCAT. AMCAT is said to serve over two million candidates every year.

The HRTech startup relies on its state-of-the-art, adaptive assessment technology, and machine learning algorithms to allow adaptive, standardized and reliable measurement of generic employability skills, i.e. language, cognitive, behavior, among other functional skills. Currently, the company serves over 3000 clients across the US, China, Philippines, Middle East, and Southeast Asia, among others.

Wipro buys Consultancy firm Cooper

India’s third largest IT services company Wipro has acquired US based design and business consultancy firm Cooper, which counts Google and Starbucks as clients, as it looks to strengthen its digital offerings to clients globally.

Cooper, which Wipro is buying for $ 8.5 million (Rs 56 crore), will be integrated with Designit, the digital arm of the Indian firm as CEO Abidali Neemuchwala deepens the company’s expertise in digital offerings and focus on earning higher revenue. Cooper’s founders -Sue Cooper and Alan Cooper will join Wipro to push the company’s aggressive digital strategy. Alan Cooper is considered the ‘Father of Visual Basic,’ and is a prominent player in interaction design, UX and professional design education for more than 25 years.

Wipro also gets access offices in New York and San Francisco with the acquisition. Wipro said Cooper would also help the company expand its reach in North American market and add capabilities in professional design education. Wipro acquired Designit for nearly Rs 595 crore in July, 2015 to add design and digital technology capabilities.

Wipro’s digital arm and Designit currently serve clients from across 16 offices in different markets in the world. The acquisition process is expected to be completed in the October-December quarter of the current financial year, subject to customary closing condition.

Wipro to acquire Appirio

Country’s third largest IT firm Wipro has acquired cloud services company Appirio for $500 Million (around Rs 3,340 crore) in a cash transaction. Once completed, Wipro acquisition of Appirio will create one of the world’s largest cloud transformation practices, a game changer in todays as a service and digital economy.

Post-acquisition, Wipro will also have access to Topcoder, a crowd sourcing marketplace connecting over a million designers, developers and data scientists around the world with customers. Wipro will consolidate its existing cloud applications practices of Salesforce and Workday under the Appirio brand and structure.

Established in 2006, the US based Appirio has offices in Jaipur, San-Francisco, Dublin, London and Tokyo and has 1,250 employees worldwide. It had revenues of $196 Million in 2015 and its clients include brands like Stryker, Robert Half, Johnson Controls, Cardinal Health, Coco-cola, eBay, Facebook, Home Depot, and Sony PlayStation.

In an increasingly digital world, as consumer behaviors and expectations continue to be reshaped by experiences, companies are recognizing that they need to transform how they engage with customers and employees by leveraging the power of Cloud. The acquisition is expected to be closed in the quarter ending 31 December 2016. William Blair & Company acted as financial advisor to Appirio during the transaction.

Wipro to buy HealthPlan Services

Wipro Ltd has agreed to buy HealthPlan services, a Florida, US based company that caters to the health insurance sector for $460 Million. This is the third buyout by India’s third largest software services exported in less than three months.

Earlier in December, Wipro spent $78 Million to buy Cellent, a German Technology Company that implements and maintains SAP (Systems Applications and Products) software for clients in automobile and manufacturing segments. Later, it bought a securities processing and fund administration services provider Viteos Group for $130 Million as the company looks to expand its portfolio of services to financial companies.

Both HealthcarePlan services and Viteos Group offer solutions over cloud computing platforms or what is called as Business process as a service. The partnership with HealthPlan services positions Wipro to participate in the shift of the US Health insurance industry towards a customer centric business model.

HealthPlan services strengthen Wipro position in the health insurance exchange market while offering synergies with Wipro presence in the Managed Medicare and commercial group insurance markets. This is Wipro fourth acquisition in last 12 months. 

Wipro buys Viteos

Wipro Ltd. has agreed to buy Viteos Group, a securities processing and fund administration services provider, for $130 Million in an effort to expand its portfolio of services to financial companies.

The 12 year old New Jersey based Viteos provides services including processing, reconciliation of trade, settlements and customer data across asset classes and currencies for investment banking clients in the US, Europe and Asia. Wipro plans to use Viteos licensing platform to offer services to buy side companies, a term used by investment bankers to refer to institutions that buy investment services such as mutual funds, pension funds and insurers.

Wipro, India’s third largest software exporter already offers many of these solutions to its clients on the sell side of capital markets. They in turn, sell investment services to asset management companies. Viteos, which generated $26.5 Million in revenue in the year ended March with roughly 400 employees, will retain its brand identity to further strengthen its presence among existing clients.

The acquisition reflects a broader shift in India’s software outsourcing industry towards building an arsenal of intellectual property led high margin software platforms rather than relying on an army of engineers to offer technology solutions to clients. Wipro and Infosys have also been investing heavily in startups to build new age technology solutions for clients.

Wipro buys German Firm Cellent

Wipro Ltd has bought Cellent AG, a German Technology company that implements and maintains SAP (systems applications and products) software for clients in automobile and manufacturing segments, for $78 Million. The purchase is the latest move by India’s third largest software firm to scale up its business in the DACH or Germany, Austria and Switzerland of Western Europe.

This is Bengaluru based Wipro second purchase in the region this year. It bought Denmark based Designit for $95 Million in July to strengthen its presence in the digital space. Cellent is a well-established player with marquee customers, a well-known brand and has strong local talent. Cellent client include marquee car maker Daimler AG and lens maker Carl Zeiss AG and SAP is a business software used to run basic functions in finance, human resources and manufacturing.

Wipro bought Cellent from its parent firm, German bank Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg. Wipro will also see Cellent’s more than 800 consultants join the firm even as it expects to close the acquisition by the fourth quarter of 2015-16. Many buyouts by homegrown information technology firm this year are in the SAP space. Earlier this year, Infosys paid $200 Million to buy automation technology provider Panaya.

Mid-tier Bengaluru based software exported Mindtree bought UK based Bluefin Solutions, which helps migrate SAP installed software, like ERP to the cloud. Wipro 8000 strong manufacturing and hi-tech segment is the second largest industry vertical, behind banking and finance. 

Wipro to acquire Designit

In line with its strategy to equip itself tapping the opportunities in the digital space, Wipro, India’s third largest IT services company will acquire Designit, a Denmark based global strategic design firm for a consideration of around Euro 85 Million. The acquisition is expected to strengthen the capability of Wipro Digital, the digital business unit of the company which it set up in March this year.

Founded in 1991, Designit is considered one of the world’s largest privately held firms with an employee base of around 300 and design studios across nine cities globally. The company which reported revenues of Euro 27 Million provides strategic design, user experience and interaction design services to many global brands in segments such as Healthcare, banking, automotive and retail. Some of its global clientele includes companies such as Cisco, Harman, Brussels Airlines, Vodafone, Jabra, Danske Bank and Telefonica.

With the change in the technology buying behavior by global enterprises, the vendors who were offering traditional IT outsourcing services are seen aggressively looking at newer areas like social, mobility, big data and analytics and cloud wherein they are trying to position themselves as end-to-end digital partners. Strengthening the design capability holds key in these areas as it impacts the consumer experiences in a big way.

Wipro has been one of the most acquisitive IT services companies in India. The company has so far acquired around nine companies through the largest one so has been Infocrossing which it bought in August 2007 for about $600 Million. 

Infosys Buys Panaya

Infosys is an Indian Multinational corporation that provides business consulting, information technology, software engineering, and outsourcing services. It is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. Panaya is American software as a Service (SaaS) company that provides cloud based quality management services for enterprise applications worldwide. Its services run on the Amazon Product Advertising API.

Infosys announced that it would buy automation technology company Panaya Inc, at an enterprise value of about $200 Million, as the third largest IT Company in the world looks to boost competitiveness and margins. Panaya Technology would help it to bring automation to several service lines through software as a service model, reducing risks, costs, and the time taken to bring services in the market.

For $8.25 Billion turnover Infosys, which has a cash reserve of $5.4 Billion, this is the second largest acquisition after the September 2012 buyout of Switzerland based SAP services company Loadstone Management Consultancy for $345 Million. Infosys is acquiring Panaya at a time when IT services companies are laying greater emphasis on automation as workforce optimization holds key to profitability for the industry which is primarily driven by human resource.

Infosys and its peers TCS, Wipro, and HCL have been deploying automation to enhance delivery to their clients. Infosys has been traditionally shy of acquisition making less than half a dozen buyouts in its existence of over 33 years most of which were small with deal size below $50 Million. Infosys has been making big bets on automation and other new technology like artificial intelligence and cloud based services as the company tries to regain some lost ground from rivals like Tata Consultancy Services.