India’s A91 invests $30m in digital consultancy
Indian VC firm A91 Partners has invested USD 30m in KaarTech, a local digital transformation consultancy looking to expand in the Middle East, EU, and North America.
Gautam Mago, a general partner at A91, and Kaushik Anand, a partner, will join the KaarTech board. It is being called the company’s first external funding. Venture debt firm BlackSoil Capital provided about USD 4m in debt financing aimed at a North American expansion in 2021.
KaarTech, also referred to as Kaar Technologies, specialises in intellectual property and related digital services, as well as enterprise resource planning software developed by SAP. It claims deep expertise in discrete manufacturing, professional services automation, process manufacturing, and consumer packaged goods.
Since its establishment in 2006 by four college friends, the Chennai-headquartered company has grown to more than 2,000 employees with operations in 15 international markets. It claims to have executed over 2,500 projects to date and doubled its revenue in the past 24 months. Clients include Saudi oil giant Aramco.
The staff attrition rate is 3.5%, compared to more than 20% for the rest of the industry, according to a statement. Employee satisfaction initiatives include a compulsory leave scheme to promote work-life balance, as well as a policy whereby the CEO interviews every employee to identify and address their concerns.
KaarTech will use the fresh capital to augment the services portfolio while pursuing a mix of organic and inorganic growth initiatives with particular emphasis on North America. The plan is to become the partner of choice globally for customers conducting digital transformation programmes with SAP products, including cloud ecosystem customer experience, process automation, and data analytics functions.
A91 was spun out of Sequoia Capital India, now Peak XV Partners, by Mango and two fellow co-founders. Anand also previously worked for Sequoia India. The firm makes early to mid-stage sector-agnostic investments with a strong preference for bootstrapped companies. Its second fund closed on USD 550m in 2021.
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