Homegrown private equity firm Kedaara Capital has bought a majority stake in Great Software Laboratory Pvt Ltd (GS Lab), a digital product engineering services company, in a bid to cash in on the rising demand for technology solutions across the world.
Kedaara’s investment will enable GS Lab to deliver digital product engineering services to a wider pool of customers across Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), enterprises, and digital-native companies globally, GS Lab said in a statement. The company has engineered over 350 software and digital products for its customers over 18 years.
GS Lab will expand globally with the help of Kedaara Capital and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R), a US-based private equity firm and Kedaara’s joint-venture partner, the company said. DC Advisory acted as the sole financial advisor to GS Lab on the transaction.
“The investment by Kedaara will enable us to further build on our strengths and take advantage of the growing need for innovative software and digital solutions across industries globally and in India, by leveraging Kedaara and CD&R’s extensive network and relationships,” said Shridhar Shukla and Sunil Gaitonde, co-founders of GS Lab in a joint statement.
Kedaara has been aggressively investing in technology companies of late. In October, it had led a $75 million funding round in online beauty products marketplace Purplle along with Sequoia Capital and Blume Ventures. Kedaara had also led a Rs 500 crore funding round in Veritas Finance Pvt Ltd, focused on lending to micro, small, medium enterprises (MSMEs).
Kedaara’s aggressive technology bets come at a time when the digital product engineering services is witnessing high growth globally. The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) has pegged India’s engineering R&D sector to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13% to $65 billion by 2025, up from $31 billion in 2019.
“Digital transformation is one of the key investment themes for us, and we are very excited to partner with the GS Lab team to support their continued development of outstanding digital software products for their clients worldwide. Shridhar, Sunil, Atul and the senior leadership team have truly built a strong platform at GS Lab with exceptional product engineering capabilities, focus on innovation and partnerships with world-class clients,” said Sunish Sharma, co-chief executive officer and managing partner of Kedaara, and Parin Mehta, Managing Director of Kedaara in a joint statement.
