Cargill Ventures invest $9 mn in IT firm KPIT Cummins

Cargill Ventures, the venture capital arm of Cargill, Inc., will invest a total of $9 mn in Indian IT consulting firm KPIT Cummins Infosystems. KPIT Cummins will issue shares of $4.5 mn on a preferential basis, in addition to warrants convertible into shares of up to $4.5 mn. The warrants will be convertible into shares at the end of 18 months from the date of issue-based on certain parameters.

Cargill is a privately held company with operations in 63 countries and revenues of over $75 bn. Cargill Ventures is a diversified growth-capital investor across the IT, life sciences and IT sectors.

Read more in the Business Standard article.

Software testing company up for sale by stakeholders ICICI Ventures and Acer Technologies

Bangalore-based independent software testing company RelQ has been put up for sale by ICICI Ventures and computer-maker Acer Technologies of Taiwan, the majority shareholders of the company. UBS is working on the mandate of bringing in the potential buyer. Companies such as KPIT Cummins, NIIT and CGI have already shown interest in buying RelQ.

RelQ is present in test automation, game testing and embedded software testing and has invested around $3 million towards infrastructure and test labs. RelQ is growing at a CAGR of 40% with revenues of $21 mn for the FY 2005-06 and estimated revenues of $33 mn for the FY 2006-07. It has a major presence in Bangalore with offices in the US, Europe and Singapore and a headcount of around 800. It has already acquired two companies, one in France and in the UK each.

The global market for testing services is estimated to be at $15 bn, of which $2-6 bn is expected to be outsourced to India by 2007. The CAGR for the independent outsourced testing market is estimated to be over 60%. Maveric and Thinksoft in Chennai and AppLabs in Hyderabad are some of the prominent independent testing companies in India.

Read the article in The Economic Times.