Happiest Minds to acquire US-based Aureus Tech Systems for $8.5 million

Happiest Minds Technologies has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a 100 per cent stake in the United States-based digital product engineering company, Aureus Tech Systems, for $8.5 million (approximately Rs 71 crore). The acquisition is expected to be completed before the end of June 2024.

This is the third acquisition by Happiest Minds in FY25. In April, it acquired PureSoftware Technologies for $94.5 million (Rs 784 crore) and Macmillan Learning India for Rs 4.5 crore.

Aureus is a niche, Azure-native digital product engineering company focused on digital transformation through data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and application modernisation. The 150-person company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, delivers "bespoke cloud and AI-based transformation solutions," according to the company.

Through this acquisition, Happiest Minds aims to strengthen its domain capabilities in insurance and reinsurance, healthcare and life sciences, as well as its product and digital engineering services (PDES) business.

"Aureus strengthens our BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and healthcare industry groups, enhances our value proposition in these verticals, and contributes to our new customer acquisition initiatives. We are excited about the potential to cross-sell and up-sell infrastructure, security, automation, analytics, and GenAI (generative AI) offerings to Aureus's customers to accelerate Happiest Minds' growth," said Joseph Anantharaju, executive vice-chairman of Happiest Minds.

Venkatraman Narayanan, managing director and chief financial officer (CFO) of Happiest Minds, said, "We are in a very exciting phase and are looking forward to a great showing in FY25, which will be a mix of strong organic growth, including consolidation play with existing marquee customers like Macmillan Learning, and inorganic growth through the acquisition of PureSoftware and now Aureus. Aureus provides us with a strong brand recall in the insurance/reinsurance space, granting access to a market leader with a compelling value proposition and a strategic presence in the customer's long-term imperatives."

Established in September 2011, Aureus Tech Systems reported a consolidated turnover of $8.3 million in 2023.

In a post-earnings media call, Happiest Minds executive chairman Ashok Soota said that FY25 is poised to be the "best year ever" for the company since its Initial Public Offering (IPO), due to strong inorganic growth in addition to organic growth.

"This year, we are back on track to achieve our long-term vision of $1 billion in revenues by FY31. We required a 25.3 per cent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) when we announced this goal in September 2021, but now we envision that we will need only a CAGR of 22 per cent to achieve this goal," Soota said.