After garnering India’s biggest private equity (PE) investment in IT products, IBS is scouting for good buys in the MRO (maintenance, repair and overhauling) space. Two or three potential acquisiton candidates are in the shortlist.
“Although filling the MRO space would fit the bill for IBS’s skillscape, the reality is that acquirable aircraft maintentence units are not many,” says IBS chairman VK Mathews.
IBS software, a Technopark-based products company in travel, transportation and logicals (TTL) verticals, has grown 700% in paid-up capital in a decade.
Not sated by $60 million preferential shares in investment from the Greenwich-based PE giant General Atlantic, IBS is also working on a roadmap for an IPO in 2009. “We’re targeting to be valued at $1 billion by then,” Mathews told reporters, here.
In the last five years, the company has made three domain-based takeovers, two in US and one in UK. The acquisitions in the UK and US have been converted to two development centres, along with two anchor development centres in Kerala. “The employee costs are a whopping threefold overseas, but a London or US employee compensates in terms of more effective client communication,” says Mathews.
Those who run on systems from IBS are leading airports like Heathrow, Gatwick and Dubai, air carriers like Emirates, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, oil behemoths like Shell and British Petroleum, cruise-liners like Cunard (Queen Mary II and Queen Elizabeth II), Royal Caribbean Cruise and Star Cruise and holiday firms like the US-based mountain ski vacation player Vail Resorts. The company has ten overseas offices.