Business services provider Quess Corp said Tata Sons had sold it the remaining 30% of BPO provider Conneqt Business Solutions Ltd.
Quess had purchased a 51% stake in the company in Nov 2017 at a cost of Rs 153 cr or about $23 mn at the time.
Quess had increased its stake in Conneqt from 51% to 70% in May 2019 via infusion of primary capital, which was used to fund the acquisition of Allsec Technologies Limited (“Allsec”) a listed CLM and HRO services provider. Tata Sons held the right to sell the remaining stake to Quess as well, which it now exercised.
“Conneqt has performed exceedingly well during this period achieving a pre-COVID revenue CAGR of around 15%, growing NPS from 14% to 45%, and reducing concentration from its top 10 customers, from 74% to 59% of revenues.
“The combined strength of Conneqt and Allsec provides Quess a substantial base to expand its CLM and BPM capabilities with greater emphasis on digital services and international expansion.
“Full ownership of Conneqt will enable Quess to optimally realize synergies between various divisions of Quess, Conneqt and Allsec, accelerating its growth in the IT/ITES space,” Quess said.
Quess said Conneqt is a leading customer customer and business process management services provider in India and has over 20 delivery centers and over 29,000 employees.
Conneqt was originally set up as Tata Business Support in 1995. Quess is a unit of Fairfax group, founded by Canadian-Indian entrepreneur Prem Watsa.
“Conneqt has performed remarkably since we acquired it in 2017, with significant milestones achieved in terms of robust revenue CAGR, NPS improvement and reduction of top 10 customer exposure,” said Suraj Moraje, Group CEO and Managing Director of Quess Corp.
“The consolidation of our holding in Conneqt is an affirmation of our continued commitment to Conneqt, its employees and customers. This will further accelerate Conneqt’s transition to non-voice services as the business benefits from the triple tailwinds of virtualization, digitization, and automation while providing more opportunities to realize synergies with Quess. We thank the Tata Group for the fruitful and enjoyable partnership to date.”
Quess Corp was founded a business support services provider by entrepreneur Ajit Abraham Isaac and was acquired by travel company Thomas Cook in 2013. Thomas Cook was later acquired by Prem Watsa’s Fairfax.