India’s Sterlite Technologies is closing the acquisition of Elitecore Technologies, a global telecom software company, for an enterprise value of around INR 1.8 billion ($27.3 million) in an all-cash deal.
Established in 1999, and majority owned by investment firm, First Carlyle Ventures Mauritius, Elitecore is a global provider of software product and services delivering business support systems (BSS), Packet Core and Carrier Wi-Fi Solutions. Elitecore said it has proven case references with over 150 deployments for 52 communication service providers across 40 countries. Its other products include 24 online access gateway and NEOX IP Telephony, which allows carriers and service providers to offer a secure and reliable voice over internet protocol (VoIP).
Headquartered in Ahmedabad, Elitecore has a team of over 700 strong industry professionals spread across its offices in India, Southeast Asia, UAE and Africa. Over the last few years, Elitecore has expanded its geographic footprint to include South East Asia, Middle East & Africa and lately Eastern Europe and Latin America. Elitecore is a profitable niche player with FY 2015 revenues of INR 1.47 billion ($22.3 million) and EBITDA of INR 160 million ($2.4 million) and is cash positive on a net debt basis, Sterlite said in a statement.
Sterlite explained that the acquisition opens up access to a large multi-billion dollar market which, when combined with the existing large and expanding market for optical products globally, significantly enhances its overall growth opportunity. Both Sterlite and Elitecore cater to some of the largest telecom service providers globally and this acquisition will enable both companies to cross-sell their suite of offerings.
Sterlite is committed to growing its optical products business and has implemented expansion plans to increase capacity. It has also undertaken efforts to scale up revenue contribution from services and solutions and the addition of Elitecore’s operation will offer significant impetus to the revenue contribution from services. The acquisition allows Sterlite to offer industry leading software solutions for operations support, business support and revenue management.
The transaction is expected to be value accretive by FY 2017 and is expected to be closed shortly subject to completion of certain regulatory and statutory formalities, Sterlite said. Elitecore Technologies will be merged into Sterlite Technologies, once the transaction has been completed.
