Ratings firm CRISIL Ltd, majority owned by S&P Global Inc, has agreed to purchase data analytics company Pragmatix Services Pvt. Ltd for up to Rs 56 crore ($8.6 million).
The deal will help CRISIL enhance its business intelligence, analytics and risk management offerings for financial sector clients in India and overseas, the ratings firm said in a statement.
The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The transaction is likely to be completed during the first quarter of 2018.
Mumbai-based Pragmatix’s founders and its team will join CRISIL after the completion of the transaction. Pragmatix has 110 employees as on date.
Pragmatix, which is focussed on the banking, financial services and insurance vertical, was founded in 2011 by former Citibank employees Alok Rastogi, V Dinesh, Ashish Vora and Ramesh Lakshminarayanan. It provides solutions for customer retention and profitability, sales force effectiveness and productivity, fraud identification and prevention, product functionality and marketing effectiveness, payments spend, risk management, operational efficiency and risk analytics.
In May 2015, Pragmatix raised Rs 15 crore ($2.4 million then) from SIDBI Venture Capital Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Small Industries Development Bank of India.
An alumnus of IIM Calcutta, Rastogi spent 12 years at Citibank across multiple functions. Vora worked with Citibank and Kotak Mahindra Bank in the past while Lakshminarayanan headed technology infrastructure for the Indian sub-continent at Citibank in his last role.
In FY16, Pragmatix posted a revenue of Rs 14 crore and a loss of Rs 1 crore, according to VCCEdge, the data research arm of News Corp VCCircle.
In June this year, CRISIL acquired state-run Canara Bank’s 8.9% stake in smaller rival CARE Ratings Ltd for Rs 435 crore ($67.5 million).
The ratings firm had acquired UK-based analytics firm Coalition Development Systems India Pvt. Ltd in June 2012 for roughly Rs 250 crore in cash. The acquisition marked CRISIL’s entry into proprietary research outside India.
In September 2010, CRISIL had bought out Chicago-headquartered Pipal Research Corporation, a knowledge process outsourcing firm, from Firstsource Solutions for $12.75 million.
