February 10, 2010, 10:56 am
“ICG acquired a minority stake in CPA Global”, read the headline of a news article. Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), an independent investor and fund manager acquired a significant minority stake in a well-known LPO service provider. I was quite excited to read this news piece. Why? Investors taking interest in a segment positively reflects on the “sustainability factor” of the industry.
Most service providers in the LPO industry started off as self-funded companies and a few received funding from angel investors. In order to build marketing presence or significant knowledge base ahead of others, service providers are seeking VCs/PEs/angels. Yes! Investors are getting interested in the LPO segment. Funding from VC/PE firms started flowing in, but of course is limited at the moment as most companies are still quite small.
Continue reading ‘Investors get interested in LPO’ »
November 20, 2009, 12:04 pm
The global market research industry has been under strain with budget cuts and layoffs seen in the past 1-2 years. The impact of recession on the market research industry has also had a spillover effect on the Indian offshore market research vendors that has made vendors go beyond standard market research service offerings (Market Intelligence)
However of late we are seeing acquisitions and funding in the Indian offshoring service providers. Global knowledge services provider Integreon recently took over Grail Research. The company is a global strategic research and decision support firm, part of the US-based management consulting company, Monitor Group. With the global market research industry laying low for a while, it does provide Indian knowledge services and large IT/BPO players opportunities to acquire or form strategic partnership with onshore service providers. Indian onshore knowledge services providers have grown in the past 2-3 years in terms of scale and services maturity. Few of the larger players have established relationships with large clientele and are moving towards a more advisory role which has always been played by prominent market research companies like AC Nielsen, Synovate, TNS, Ipsos etc.
Continue reading ‘Of global recession and strategic acquisitions’ »
September 4, 2009, 6:16 am
Two years back, the question, “Is the knowledge services business scalable?” raised a lot of interest at a conference. Recently, a client asked me a similar question, “How important is size for an LPO?” . Well…the scenario two years back was quite different, with scale and specialization used as two distinct differentiators. The knowledge services business (especially, the LPO business) was not perceived as scalable (with a majority of 40 and 50 people companies). However, this is changing now as a result of the shifting needs of clients and increasing volume of work sent offshore.
Company size and scalability are important selection criteria, according to our recent survey of US and UK based law firms. Amongst the companies that have indicated greater importance for size are large law firms that are looking at service providers as an extension of their support staff and intend to send large volumes of work, across service lines. In other cases, size of the service provider does not appear to be such a crucial factor, given that the industry is yet to move towards larger contracts that require over 100 to 200 people at any given point of time.
Continue reading ‘Scaling up Knowledge’ »
