EQT taps mobile professional growth

This will in turn drive demand for workers. A lack of medical practitioners locally has left the region reliant on foreign professionals to meet the demand. In this context, the services of companies like Hong Kong-based Dataflow Verification Services - which provides essential background checks for migrant workers - are essential.

The company dominates the immigration compliance verifications market in the GCC region, checking the educational and professional backgrounds of workers in many industries. EQT Partners, which recently acquired the company through its EQT Mid Market Fund, is betting that demand for such services will grow.

"You can say it is a global phenomenon that we are a targeting, with more and more mobile professionals moving out-of-country to work," says Tak Wai Chung, a partner with EQT in Hong Kong. "So there is a lot of potential to make this into a global platform and a lot of ambition for us to grow it."

Set up in 2006, Dataflow provides its services to government authorities and private institutions. In addition to Hong Kong and the GCC region, the company currently has operations in Singapore, Malaysia, India and Jordan. It helps clients to conduct primary source verification (PSV) on the credentials of highly skilled professionals, relying on a network of relationships with over 25,000 issuing authorities such as schools and universities. Dataflow employs 45 people and claims to processes more than 200,000 applications from 168 countries each year.

The financial details of the transaction - which came via an auction process - were not disclosed. However, the deal is understood to fall within the fund's sweet spot of EUR80-200 million ($107-270 million) for Asia. The management will retain a significant minority stake.

"There were quite a few bidders in the process but we found we had a good chemistry with the selling shareholders and the founders, and we were able showcase the resources we had to further grow the business," says Chung. EQT will support the company's growth by leveraging its global network of industrial professionals.

"There is still a lot of room to grow, so we will continue to penetrate the GGC. Second, there is chance to expand globally; we have already made in-roads to Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, where there is a lot of demand for mobile professionals. Lastly, we are looking at developing new products around the data profiles of the professionals we have screened."

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Buyout
• Hong Kong (China)
• Technology
• buyout
• EQT Partners