Mindtree scouts for $200 million worth deals in India and abroad

BENGALURU: Mindtree is building a dedicated team for mergers and acquisitions as it scouts for large deals in India and abroad with a war chest of more than $200 million in cash and cash equivalents. The team is headed by Rahul Malhotra, who joined Mindtree this month from rival Tech Mahindra, where he was director mergers and acquisitions. Previously , the IIT Varanasi and ISB alumni was M&A head at HCL Infosystems. Chief Operating Officer Parthasarthy NS will also oversee M&A activities.

Acquisitions are a crucial part of Mindtree's strategy to expand in enterprise services and new technolo gies so it can pitch for large deals that often land with its rivals.

Under the enterprise segment, the company will look to acquire companies that can help it bid for large contracts in packaged software and infra structure services. It will also look to buy companies with new technologies in the space of digital marketing, mobile and analytics, CEO Krishnakumar Natarajan, told ET. “Today, we have over 30 Fortune 500 customers but we work on packaged software for only 5 of them. Since we don’t have critical mass in packaged application, the rest of the customers still go to other vendors for that. If a company can help us get scale in either SAP or Oracle, we can be far more competitive in that market,” Natarajan said.

Mindtree faces a similar situation in the infrastructure services space. “Although we are winning deals in this space, we are not getting called to $100-million deals because we do not have scale,” he said.

Natarajan said Mindtree has cash and cash equivalents of more than $200 million, having consistently generated free cash flow in the previous four years. “Resources are not a constraint. It is really the right opportunity that’ll help us leverage our strategic direction,” he said.
“Today, we have over 30 Fortune 500 customers but we work on packaged software for only 5 of them. Since we don’t have critical mass in packaged application, the rest of the customers still go to other vendors for that. If a company can help us get scale in either SAP or Oracle, we can be far more competitive in that market,” Natarajan said.

Mindtree faces a similar situation in the infrastructure services space. “Although we are winning deals in this space, we are not getting called to $100-million deals because we do not have scale,” he said.

Natarajan said Mindtree has cash and cash equivalents of more than $200 million, having consistently generated free cash flow in the previous four years. “Resources are not a constraint. It is really the right opportunity that’ll help us leverage our strategic direction,” he said.