OnMobile Acquires French VAS Company Voxmobili For $35 Million
Mon, 09/03/2007 - 17:52 — Sahad P V
India's largest value added services company OnMobile is becoming even bigger. The Bangalore-based company has acquired 100 per cent stake in Voxmobili SA, a French company that provides software services to telecom companies, for €25.83 million or $35.12 million (or Rs 143.51 crore). The acquisition is made by OnMobile Asia Pacific Pvt Ltd, one of the pioneers of VAS solutions to Indian telcos.
OnMobile is acquiring a total of 3,697,509 shares for a total consideration of Rs 143.51 crore, of which Rs 104 crore is paid in cash. The rest is subject to earn out valuation adjustment for a maximum amount of Rs 19.5 crore, stock options worth Rs 7.2 crore, and OnMobile shares worth Rs 12.64 crore.
The current acquisition will help OnMobile expand to Asia Pacific, Europe and Australia, where Voxmobili has deployments.
Second deal
This is the second acquisition of OnMobile. According to The Economic Times, sometime last year, OnMobile had acquired ITFinity Solutions, a Mumbai company funded by private investors like Rajat Gupta of McKinsey, Ashish Dhawan of ChrysCapital, Luis Miranda of India Development Fund, investment bank Edelweiss Capital and Rajesh TS Reddy, former founder of Unimobile.
OnMobile, which has plans to do a $150 million IPO in the next one year, was founded by Arvind Rao. It had last year received $27.8 million in its second round of funding from Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Polygon Investment Partners - rumoured to be at a valuation of $300 million. The company had raised $18 million in first round from Argo Global Capital and Infosys Technologies. Infosys, which incubated the company, owns about 13 per cent stake in the company.
Benefits of acquisition
OnMobile will get access to "world class" Phone Backup solutions developed by Vox, which are currently used by some world leading telcos. It will also get access to an experienced team of software developers at Vox who has experience on 3G technology platform.
The deal will definitely put OnMobile on a different pedestal compared to its competitors like Cellebrum, One97 Communications, Bharti Telesoft, IMI Mobile, and Mobile2win. It remains to be seen now how the VAS war will play out in India.
Related:
OnMobile Raises $27.8 Million From Goldman, DB, Polygon Investment
