Glodyne Technoserve Ltd, a Mumbai-based technology services firm, has acquired venture-backed e-governance services firm Comat Technologies. Bangalore-based Comat has raised funding from a number of private equity and venture capital investors like Avigo Capital Partners, Enam, Elevar Equity (through Unitus Equity Fund) and Omidyar Network.
The deal will help Glodyne Technoserve, a player in the remote infrastructure management services space, expand its presence in the e-governance space. Glodyne said in a statement that the deal would be done on a cash basis and there would be no equity dilution, but did not disclose the deal value. Prime Securities Ltd acted as the advisor on the transaction.
The share price of Glodyne was trading at Rs 397.50 at 1:17 pm, down by 0.49 per cent.
Comat has been deploying information and communication technology (ICT)-based G2C (Government to Citizen) and B2C (Business to Consumer) services delivery in rural and semi-urban areas. It provides services like employability training, job creation and financial inclusion, as well as essential government services.
Comat has a pipeline of projects in areas like UID services and has also implemented a PDS programme in Karnataka, which involved computerisation of food and civil services department across 10 million families in the state. According to its website, Comat operates a network of over 2000 centres spread across five Indian states and serves more than 50,000 rural citizens daily.
Comat had raised $15 million in funding from Omidyar Network and Elevar’s Unitus Equity Fund (UEF) in September, 2008. It also raised $6.2 million from Avigo Capital Partners in late 2007. In addition, the company also raised funding from Intel Capital, which had already exited.
“Comat acquisition will help Glodyne expand its reach in new states and add key partnerships and relationships with governments for providing citizen-centric programmes. With Glodyne’s financial strengths, strong presence in the government sector and its experience in executing large public-private partnership projects, it is confident of ensuring efficiency improvement through backward integration and strengthening its position in the government services,” Glodyne said in a statement.
Glodyne has been executing projects like National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and focuses on financial inclusion, among others.
Last year, Glodyne had acquired DecisionOne Corporation, a US-based technology infrastructure management services (IMS) company, for $104 million (about Rs 469 crore). DecisionOne, one of the largest IMS players, helped Glodyne increase its revenues in FY11 by 133 per cent to Rs 1750.96 crore and net profit by 77 per cent to Rs 177.29 crore.
Also see our earlier post.