M Saraswathy Moneycontrol News
Human resource solutions and technology company, PeopleStrong, is now looking at acquisition opportunities to augment its existing offerings. The company is looking at at least two acquisitions in the next one month.
Pankaj Bansal, co-founder and CEO of PeopleStrong, said that they are getting about 10-12 new clients a month and they're targeting acquisitions to add on to their services.
"We are looking at acquiring an employee matchmaking service provider and also a payroll company. Talks are on for this. Further, we are also looking at setting up offshore centres to offer our products/services in other geographies as well," he said.
The company has about 200 customers and almost 500,000 users and offers technology-enabled HR solutions in the space of recruitment, employee life cycle management, payroll and compliance management and analytics.
Bansal said that their expansion plans have also been fuelled by the recent investment into the company by Multiples PE. In April 2017, private equity firm Multiples aquired a majority stake in PeopleStrong with an investment of Rs 400 crore. Here, the PE firm made a 'controlling investment' in PeopleStrong through a combination of primary and secondary investments.
While other industry players are getting into the space of recruitment process outsourcing, Bansal says that competition is still limited and that they are well ahead of the market.
"Through the PeopleStrong Alt platform that is built around Big Data has helped digitise all data for employee and employer convenience. This includes attendance through geo-tagging or geo-fencing, leave application, interview feedback/rating as well as documentation," said Bansal.
Further, he said that by partnering with companies likd Yatra.com and Cleartax, they are also able to build travel and tax filing solutions for the end users in companies. Private sector companies are the primary users of their services, though he says that public sector companies are slowly warming up to this idea.
PeopleStrong has clients across diverse industry sectors including Mahindra & Mahindra, HCL Infosystems, Schneider Electric, IndiGo Airlines, HDFC Life, Aditya Birla, Teva, Tata Motors, P&G, BITS Pilani, Vistara Airlines, Wipro, Hewlett Packard, Snapdeal and Zomato, among others.
Going forward, Bansal said that the aim is to have an 'Alt' appstore within the existing appstores where all their products will be available for companies to download. This is expected to be launched by February 2018.
Is listing the next logical step? Bansal said that they require atleast three more years before they go for an initial public offering. "We want to focus on the technology and innovation opportunities in the market. By 2020-21, we will be ready to go the IPO way," he says.
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