After 16 global takeovers, the Essar Group’s BPO arm Aegis is still on the lookout for acquisitions in Africa and Europe to expand its global footprint, but will stay away from Indian companies.
“We will not do acquisition in India that is for sure. It doesn’t make any sense because first of all, the assets are very heavily priced... But in Africa and Europe, yes, we will surely go for (opportunities),” the company Managing Director and Global CEO, Mr Aparup Sengupta, said here.
In May 2010, Aegis announced the acquisition of AGC Networks, the Indian division of US-based enterprise networking solutions firm Avaya, for $44.5 million (about Rs 207 crore).
Later in the year, the company announced that it will buy out Y&R Inversiones Publicitas and its business partner in their jointly held BPO firm, Actionline, in Argentina.
Its other acquisitions include Sallie Mae’s customer service centre in Texas, Australian BPO UCMS and CCN Group.
Asked about the potential targets for acquisitions, Mr Sengupta said: “We are looking at companies that have got some good track record with clients and a reasonably good management team. It has to be value creative for us, we don’t want to be paying overly high prices.”
The $800-million company (in terms of annual revenue) gets about one-third of its revenue from US and the Philippines, while another one-third comes from India, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
“In terms of geographies, the Philippines is seeing very high growth and we saw a huge uptake in the US during the last quarter,” he added.