Mumbai: Ma Foi Management Consultants Ltd is in talks with Jobstreet.com to offer a marginal equity stake to the latter. The management consultantcy firm also has plans for an initial public offering (IPO) early next year, to raise about Rs 60 crore. The Chennai-based Ma Foi will be the first HR consulting company to raise funds from the primary market. The company hopes to charge a premium of about Rs 200 a share, but this will depend on the financial performance of Ma Foi.The company plans to achieve a total income of Rs 22 crore during the current fiscal. Confirming this, Ma Foi managing director K Pandiarajan told eFE that the firm had parleys with Jobstreet.com to offer a part of its equity stake, but Ma Foi is awaiting to close the current fiscal to show a higher valuation. "Although both the companies have not taken any final decision, we are open to the idea of offering a stake early next year.
The current value of Ma Foi will be about $12-15 million. We are also close to clinching a deal with a couple of venture capital funds (VCs) to raise about $2 million as part of our second round of funding," he added. Currently, Ma Foi and the Singapore-based JobStreet.com have a revenue sharing arrangement. As per the agreement, Jobstreet.com will be the career channel on the Ma Foi portal array. MA Foi also plans to advertise heavily about its dotcom foray in print and Web media, spending about Rs 6 crore.
www.mafoi.com is an integrated HR portal and the company has placed more than 5,500 professionals in 15 countries across 10 industry segments. The portal array comprises of channels catering to various segments, thereby seeking to nurture career growth.
The channels of Ma Foi portal cover flexible job opportunities, training and compensation. Flexicareer is a platform to offer an online platform to bring together employers and candidates, looking at flexible terms of employment, while Training Horizon is a meeting point for providers, seekers and facilitators of training. Ma Foi has also launched a career partnership scheme in which a candidate will be given online and offline support by a career mentor to fulfill their aspirations.
The scheme also offers candidates guidance and counselling on career planning and other career and HR related developments in the country, Pandiarajan said. It is also planning to initiate talks with state governments to offer HR consultancy to school/college students under a special scholarship scheme. "We will be able to offer some discounts to offer various HR initiatives to the common man in India," he added.
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