Happiest Minds scouting for $10-30 million acquisitions with focus on digital capabilities

Happiest Minds Technologies | BNP Paribas Arbitrage acquired 9,25,250 equity shares in the company at Rs 368.55 per share on the NSE.

Bengaluru-based IT service provider Happiest Minds Technologies is eyeing acquisitions in the $10 million-$30 million range with a focus on digital capabilities, primarily in Europe, the UK and Australia.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol post the company’s Q3 FY21 results, MD & CFO Venkatraman Narayanan said, “We are looking at all the geographies and what we are saying is we are looking to build a certain competency when we do acquisitions. Pimcore gives you the clear market depth on that service. That adds a lot more value than just the numbers.”

Happiest Minds, which acquired digital e-commerce and data management solutions provider Pimcore Global Services last month for $8.25 million, is now looking for similar acquisitions in coming months in the range of $10 million-$30 million, where the company can gain capabilities.

“We are looking at capabilities (digital skills), then geographies, customers and profitability. These are all the benchmarks we will look at for every (acquisition) candidate. For acquisitions we are looking at Europe, UK, Australia,” he added.

Aggressive lateral hiring plans are also in place to meet the increased demand across its digital service offerings including cloud, security solutions and analytics.

“We will push for lateral hiring. It will be in security, full stack engineering and mostly the digital skills/capabilities,” added Venkatraman.

While the company does not disclose its deal pipeline, Venkatraman said that unlike the previous quarter, the company is optimistic about growth in the coming months. During the interaction after the company’s Q2 FY21 results in November 2020, the firm said that while client spends are returning, the second wave of the pandemic was a concern.

Venkatraman explained that the outlook is now positive, with investments that were paused coming back and enterprises are investing in digital, given that they have become key to doing businesses. Happiest Minds, he pointed out, with more than 97 percent of revenues coming from digital, is well-positioned to tap into this opportunity.

Happiest Minds had a stellar debut on Indian stock exchanges in September 2020 with its initial public offering being subscribed 150 times.

For the quarter ending December 2020, the company posted a revenue of Rs 20,129 lakh, up 14.6 percent year-on-year. Net profit rose to Rs 4,215 lakh, almost double the Rs 2,138 lakh seen in the same period last year. The company employs about 2,885 people across seven geographies.

As for work from home (WFH), the company intends to get people back to work at their desks eventually. Currently, almost all its employees are working from home.

“We will WFH till the end of Q2 next year, when things will hopefully be back to normal with the vaccination drive on,” Venkatraman said.

“Our intention is to get people back to work. We always had work from home for one day per week. We will see that policy can be tweaked a little bit more,” he added.