Cymbal gives Patni foothold in US telecom

The acquisition of Cymbal Corporation is expected to enable Patni Computer Services (PCS) take on rivals such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technology and Wipro, in the $60 billion telecommunications market.

Neeraj Gupta, former chief executive of Cymbal and now head of the telecom business unit of Panti, said, while TCS, Wipro and Infosys focus on traditional services such as application development and maintenance and systems integration, Cymbal focuses on the entire end-to-end lifecycle of services. This includes consulting, business process, architectural design work and identifying newer revenue streams.

Patni acquired Cymbal for $68 million. As per the agreement, $35 million was paid on the date of acquisition. The balance would be paid over three years if it meets the projected revenue and profit targets.

Cymbal brought with it 14 of its key clients, including Virgin Mobile, Hutchison Telecom and Comcast. Gupta said while five of them belong to the $5 million bracket, one belongs to the $20 million range. Repeat businesses accounted for around 80 per cent of the Cymbal's revenues.

Prior to the acquisition, Cymbal had around 600 people, 50 per cent of which were spread across its offshore centres at Pune and Hyderabad. Post-acquisition, Patni has initiated discussion with some of the existing clients of Cymbal for business process activities as well as offshore services.

While refraining to divulge details, Gupta said the integration of Cymbal with Patni is almost complete and the brand name of Cymbal has been phased out.