Kalpathis sell Scandent stake for Rs 42 crore

The Kalpathi family, promoters of Chennai-based software firm SSI Ltd, has sold its 3.22 per cent stake in Scandent Solutions Corporation Ltd for Rs 19.80 crore.

With this, the family has sold over 7.5 per cent of its stake in the company in two days.

On Thursday, the Kalpathis had sold 12 lakh shares amounting to 4.3 per cent stake at Rs 190 per share in Scandent for Rs 22.8 crore, under a part of their strategy to exit the information technology (IT) business.

This is the third time, including yesterday's sale, the family is selling its stake in the group. Earlier, the family had sold 15 lakh shares, amounting to five per cent of their stake, at Rs 180 per share to Reliance Mutual Fund.

The family, which is planning to exit from SSI, today sold nine lakh shares of Scandent in a block deal for Rs 220 per share.

A promoter of the company D V Narasinga Rao has sold 60,000 shares, while Kalpathi family members K S Aghorana sold 2.75 lakh shares, K S Ganesh dispersed of 2.7 lakh and K S Suresh sold off 2.84 lakh in Scandent today, according to information available from BSE website.

In December 2004, the Kalpathis and SSI had jointly acquired a 17 per cent stake in Scandent that was formed after the merger of SSI Technologies. SSI was the IT services business of Chennai-based SSI group.

K S Aghoram, K S Suresh, K S Ganesh and D V Narasinga Rao had a combined stake of 13 per cent in Scandent, while SSI had around 3.66 per cent in the company.

Subsequent to the merger, Scandent promoters hold 42 per cent of Scandent's total equity, while the remaining 45 per cent was held by the public.

SSI is believed to be completely exiting from IT business, which was started as an IT training facility 15 years ago. It was later merged with Aptech in 2003 and software services division was merged with Scandent Solutions in December 2004. In Aptech, SSI has already reduced its stake from 50 per cent to 15.6 per cent.