Cognizant to acquire Belgian KBC's BPO arm ValueSource

NEW DELHI: IT services provider Cognizant today said it will acquire ValueSource NV, a subsidiary of Belgium-based integrated bank insurance group KBC, as part of a five-year contract with the group.

This is the second acquisition announcement by the US-headquartered IT firm in as many days as it had acquired Equinox Consulting of France yesterday.

The Nasdaq-listed firm said that the ValueSource acquisition is part of the contract from KBC group to optimise service delivery and drive superior customer engagement for the latter.

ValueSource, which has employee strength of over 170 persons, has a dedicated offshore development centre in Chennai. It provides integrated offshoring services in software development and maintenance in financial services and insurance domain, manufacturing and business operation automation.

ValueSource's experience in the financial services and insurance domain will provide business continuity for KBC, Cognizant said in a statement, adding its 170 employees will transfer to the US-based IT services provider.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Last year, it had acquired six companies of the Germany-based C1 Group. It had also made other acquisitions in the past including MarketRx, UBS and CoreLogic captives in the country and London-based management consulting firm PIPC Group among others.

Under an initial five-year agreement with KBC, Cognizant will deliver application development, application maintenance, and testing services to the Belgian group.

Cognizant will combine its global talent base, deep local business insight, and global best practices to help KBC achieve greater levels of operational efficiency, business agility, and governance, while realising its business objectives and enhancing competitiveness, the statement said.

"The agreement will offer ValueSource the necessary economies of scale required to remain competitive in the demanding ICT market, while building on the knowledge and expertise acquired over the years with the KBC platform," said Rudi Peeters, Senior General Manager of the KBC group.

The New Jersey, US-based Cognizant has over 50 delivery centres globally and about 1,64,300 employees as of the June quarter.

For the June quarter, Cognizant's revenues stood at $ 2.16 billion, up 20.4 per cent from the year-ago quarter.