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Preeti Mehra

Recently in Stockholm SFO Technologies, the $200-million US conglomerate of technology companies forming part of the NeST Group, is looking for acquisitions in India, to further augment its electronics and software optics business.

“We are looking to use Indian resources in electronics and software optics, with plans to go beyond contract manufacturing. For this we could go in for an acquisition in India,” said Dr David Darby, General Manager, Northlight Division of SFO Technologies, which is based in Stockholm, Sweden.

The company was acquired by NeST Group in April last year.

Northlight designs, manufactures, markets and sells optical transmitters, receivers and fibre amplifiers for optical networks operating up to 10 Gbit/s.

The acquisition has helped the Group to enter the global market for laser products for telecom application. Besides through Northlight, the company has been able to combine highly technical Swedish technology with its financial, manufacturing and marketing resources. Northlight also changed its model after the acquisition and moved from vertically integrated traditional manufacturing to a highly flexible outsourced model.

Northlight’s entire back office operations are run from its Kochi unit which employs around 300 people, several of whom work on intricate hand assembled products. In fact, a majority of its revenues come from its manufacturing in India.

Last year, NeST consolidated its different technology activities under SFO Technologies for better management control. Apart from Northlight in Sweden, it acquired Ashling Microsystems, a semiconductor emulator company in Ireland, which also provided the company product capability for embedded services and access to many key accounts in Europe.

The Group also entered into the VLSI field by setting up a modern VLSI (very large scale integration) centre at Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram, and offshore VLSI centre for Fujitsu, Japan.

More Stories on : Mergers & Acquisitions | Software

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