Persistent looking at niche buys to deepen its expertise

PUNE: Mid-size IT services provider Persistent Systems will look at niche acquisition opportunities in this fiscal year, its top executive said. This could be a company that helps expand its capabilities or geographic presence or deepen its strengths in an existing vertical.

“We will continue to be in the same industry, so we are looking at adding capabilities from an M&A perspective and go deeper in the areas of cloud, data, security or Salesforce, or into geographies like Europe,” said Sandeep Kalra, chief executive of Persistent Systems.

The focus will remain on banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), healthcare and life sciences, and hi-tech.


Persistent has about $268 million in cash on its books and will use this towards acquisitions that meet strategic business objectives or financial criteria such as revenue growth and return on capital.

“Our sweet spot is between $10 million and $50 million in terms of revenue of the target entity, though we may occasionally consider targets outside of this range,” said Kalra.

North America is its biggest market, at about 80 per cent of revenue, followed by Europe at about 10 per cent.

It intends to increase revenue share from Europe going forward.

In India, the company has been working with non-banks, and the country contributes about 9 per cent to revenues. Kalra said this was likely to remain at similar levels and grow in line with the company’s growth.

The company last week reported a 32.4 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 340.28 crore and 17.4 per cent higher revenues at Rs 3,565.80 crore for the previous fiscal year.