Scandent solutions receives 30 million Dollars funding

Bangalore, Mar 16: Scandent Solutions today announced that it had received an investment of US Dollar 30 million (Rs 133.65 crore) from Indopark Holdings Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Merrill Lynch and Co.

The investment in the form of Convertible Bonds (CBs) carrying a coupon of 5.22 per cent per annum, would be invested in future expansion, a company release here said.

The CBs would be converted into common shares of Scandent Solutions at a price of Rs 217 per share. Post the imminent merger of Scandent Solutions with its BPO arm, Cambridge Integrated Services, (and the conversion of the CB's) Indopark Holdings' stake in the merged entity would be around 5.55 per cent.

''This investment is a vindication of the potential that our merger with Cambridge holds for the company and will fund our growth in an exciting and expanding outsourcing market-place,'' the release said, quoting Scandent Solutions Executive Chairman and CEO Chris Sinclair.

Post its merger with Cambridge, Scandent would have combined revenues of around US Dollars 275 million. It had a staff strength of more than 3,500 employees located in 80 offices in four continents, and had more than 2,000 clients.

Scandent was a broad-based IT services company offering business consulting, application implementation, software engineering, maintenance and support services.

The company, in a separate release, said the Karnataka High Court had approved the merger of Scandent with Cambridge Holdings LLC, a knowledge-based business processing outsourcing firm. The merged entity would be named Cambridge Solutions Ltd. Cambridge Solutions Chairman and CEO Chris Sinclair said ''with this merger, Cambridge Solutions Ltd will be uniquely positioned to offer clients a synergistic combination of IT and BPO solutions through an integrated global delivery model.'' The combined turnover of the new entity, whose international business model would launch next generation strategic global outsourcing, would be close to US Dollar 275 million (Rs 1,230 crore). The management team of Cambridge Solutions included Executive Vice-Chairman Satyen Patel, Executive Vice-President (Global Human Resources) Richard Gros, Senior Vice-President/Financial Controller Pradeep Chaudhry and Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer Dilip Keshu.

A recent study by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) and McKinsey estimated that Indian IT and BPO industry would continue its rapid growth at the annual rate of 25 per cent, reaching 300 billion Dollars by 2010. Forrester Research predicted that 64 per cent of the companies going offshore would adopt an indirect engagement approach, hiring firms like Cambridge Solutions, which provided all the benefits of off-shoring while minimising risks.

UNI