Aegis, the business process outsourcing and information technology (IT) arm of Essar Group, plans to raise $250 million (Rs 1,125 crore) from abroad for refinancing some of its earlier debts and future acquisitions, said banking sources.
The company, which is taking the debt route, will raise the funds by issuing bonds and is in talks with a couple of multinational banks. The company, in the past, had raised debt worth $200 million.
“This will allow the company to retire its short-term debts it has raised for some of its acquisition. The company will use this to refinance some of its earlier debt and could use some of it for further acquisition,” said a banker close to the development.
When contacted, a spokesperson of the company said, “We won’t be able to offer any comments.”
Aegis, with a turnover of $800 million (Rs 3,600 crore), has acquired close to 18 companies over the past six years. It has funded its inorganic expansion partly through equity investment from the group and through debt. Acquisition has been one of the routes for Aegis to achieve its target to be a $1 billion company.
However, earlier this year the company’s CEO and Global Managing Director Aparup Dasgupta had told Business Standard that while acquisition would continue to be a focus area, growing the business organically will be a key strategy.
"We have always said that our inorganic strategy is validated only if we can grow that business organically. I think, we are in that phase now. We will looking at growing our business organically by 25 per cent and inorganically by 25 per cent," he said.
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He added that at any given point the company keeps evaluating seven assets. “We are currently looking to expand our footprint in applications services. With this rationale, we are currently evaluating five companies across Latin America and Africa that primarily specialise in applications services. These companies range between $100 million and $300 million,” said he.
As a part of this inorganic play, the firm earlier this year entered into a joint venture with Saudi Telecom to offer BPO service. The deal, worth $2 billion, for a period of eight years is one of the largest so far in the segment.