Mumbai, Aug. 6: Wipro Ltd today said it was acquiring Nasdaq-listed Infocrossing Inc for an enterprise value of $600 million. Infocrossing specialises in IT infrastructure, enterprise application and business process outsourcing.
The acquisition, an all-cash deal, is being done through Wipro Technologies, the global IT service arm of Wipro.
The offer price is $18.70, and Wipro Technologies aims to complete the share-purchase exercise by March, 2008.
Suresh Vaswani, president, global IT service-lines, Wipro said, “Wipro Technologies has identified global infrastructure services as an important driver of growth for the company and is pleased to add Infocrossing, which provides integrated managed infrastructure services to premier global clients.”
Vaswani said the acquisition would enlarge Wipro’s presence in healthcare and business process outsourcing.
Infocrossing, which is Wipro’s largest acquisition, reported revenues of $232.4 million and a net income of $9.3 million for the year ended March, 2007.
It operates five data centres in the US and provides a full portfolio of infrastructure management solutions, including server management, mainframe outsourcing, network management and security services.
Citing Nasscom figures, Wipro said the global IT infrastructure market would be a $150bn business and the size of remote infrastructure management services would reach $70 billion. This spells huge opportunities, and Infocrossing’s expertise in managed infrastructure services will enhance Wipro’s current service offerings.
Sudip Banerjee, president of enterprise solutions at Wipro, said total outsourcing services, which included infrastructure services, grew 75 per cent in the past year. The acquisition would broaden the capabilities of Wipro to uniquely position it in the remote infrastructure management space, Banerjee said.
Wipro’s chief financial officer Lakshminarayana said the acquisition was expected to boost the company’s revenues in the infrastructure management space to $12 billion in two to three years from $250 million now.
