AVCJ

India's Kedaara creates digital services platform

India's Kedaara creates digital services platform
  • LinkedIn  
  • Google plus  
  • Save this article  

India’s Kedaara Capital is forming an outsourced digital services platform through the merger of Gavs Technologies and Great Software Laboratory (GS Lab), having acquired majority interests in the two companies over the past three months.

The combined entity will bring together digital transformation and product engineering capabilities, with nearly 4,000 technical employees. Back-end operations are in India – with delivery labs in Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Baroda – while customer-facing service centres are located in the US, UK, Middle East, and India.

The business will focus on healthcare, communications, business and financial services, and financial technology. Growth initiatives include the development of leading-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud-based services, and analytics to accelerate corporate digitalisation, as well as strategic M&A.

Kedaara is collaborating with Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) on the investment. It has a strategic partnership with the global private equity firm, which initially included helping define an approach to using operating partners. Pramod Bhasin, an operating partner at Kedaara, and Keith Pitts, an operating advisor at CD&R, will join the board of the combined entity.

Kedaara is currently deploying its third India middle-market fund, which closed earlier this year on approximately USD 1.1bn. There is a strategic emphasis on pursuing control transactions and adding value through operating partners.

Gavs describes itself as an AI-led digital transformation specialist. Its core product is Zif.ai, an AI-based tech-opps offering that delivers predictive insights, automation-based remediation, and monitoring. The company, which is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, also has capabilities in cloud migration, data analytics, and cyber security services.

Kedaara's arrival facilitates an exit for Basil Technology Partners, an Indian family office-turned-private equity firm. Gavs was one of six assets Basil spun out into a new fund in 2018, supported by a USD 175m investment from secondaries specialist NewQuest Capital Partners.

Digital product engineering services provider GS Lab has worked on more than 350 software digital products over the past 18 years, including helping manufacturers develop smart factories and building online payments infrastructure for retailers. Its competencies span cloud computing and networking, internet-of-things, cybersecurity, AI, data analytics, and machine learning.

"Digital is becoming the core differentiator for businesses across the board globally by enabling them to become more agile. Both Gavs and GS Lab have complementary and unique expertise in this area, with a deep understanding of their respective industries, which we plan to offer to our customers and accelerate the timelines for them to achieve their digital transformation goals," Bhasin said in a statement.

The US-India technology services corridor has provided some rich pickings for Indian private equity firms. Last year, ChrysCapital exited Infogain with a 6.4x return, having driven its transformation from a generic IT services provider into a digital engineering services specialist. Proceeds from the sale exceeded the entire corpus of the fund that made the investment.

  • LinkedIn  
  • Google plus  
  • Save this article  

More on South Asia

Latest News

Asian GPs slow implementation of ESG policies - survey
Asian GPs slow implementation of ESG policies - survey

Asia-based private equity firms are assigning more dedicated resources to environment, social, and governance (ESG) programmes, but policy changes have slowed in the past 12 months, in part due to concerns raised internally and by LPs, according to a...

  • GPs