Bangalore, India-based Wipro, whose IT services division Wipro Technologies is the third largest software and services player in India, paid INR 264m ($5.5m) to acquire the remaining stake in Spectramind from investment firm Housing Development Finance Corporation, bringing the company’s entire shareholding in the business to 100%.
Wipro has been keen to buy up the entire Spectramind business since taking a majority 66% stake in the business last July for $83m in cash, which brough its entire holding to over 90%. In its first full year to March 31, 2002, Spectramind reported revenue of $10m, and made a loss of $2m. In the quarter to June 30, it made an after-tax profit of $300,000 on revenue of $6m.
Spectramind provides processing services, administrative support and call center services to more than 200 clients including General Motors and Nortel Networks, and with over 1,400 staff claims to be one of the largest back-office operations in India, and the company aims to employ over 5,000 staff by March 2004. The acquisition also follows an announcement by Wipro’s CEO Vivek Paul last November that the company is in the process of negotiations for providing BPO services for Microsoft.
Source: Computerwire
