WNS to buy Marketics for $ 65 mln

Bangalore, Mar 12: BPO firm WNS has announced that it has signed a non-binding letter of intent to acquire Bangalore-based Marketics Technologies, a privately-owned offshore analytics services firm, for a total enterprise value of million in cash. If completed, the acquisition is expected to enhance WNS' knowledge services business, which provides market research, business&financial research and analytics services.

"The Marketics acquisition, when completed, will enhance our knowledge services leadership, help us penetrate new consumer-centric industries and move us further up the value chain in our service offering,'' said WNS Group chief executive officer Neeraj Bhargava.

WNS expects to acquire Marketics for up to million, including a million payment at the time of the closing and an earn-out of up to million over a 12-month period. The company expects to finance the transaction primarily through existing cash and cash equivalents. If completed, WNS will gain approximately 200 Marketics employees, including 170 in Bangalore and 30 in Coimbatore. The acquisition is subject to due diligence and execution of definitive documentation (with customary closing conditions, such as regulatory approvals) and is expected to be closed within the next 90 days.

Founded in 2003, Marketics Technologies, provides revenue-enhancing solutions that increase marketing effectiveness and return on marketing investment for the world's leading marketers. According to market sources, the company is seeing revenues in the range of million. Industry observers say that the deal of million is not an overvalued price since KPO firms have much higher billing rates and margins compared to the average BPO firm. As one of them puts it, WNS has paid for Marketics' knowledge content and domain expertise and the latter has not been valued in terms of scalability and repeatability as in case of BPO firms.

"After four years of significant growth and establishment of our leadership position in offshore analytics, we are ready for bigger things. WNS provides us the best platform to accelerate our growth and achieve our goal of creating innovative and market leading analytic solutions. The cultural fit with WNS is excellent and their financial strength, customer access, infrastructure and recruiting capabilities will be a tremendous boost for our business," said Sreenivasan Ramakrishnan, co-founder and chief executive officer of Marketics Technologies.

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