Promising Acquisition - III

This is third in the series of Promising Acquisitions.

MindTree, an Indian Software Services company,recently acquired the Indian subsidiary of Kyocera Wireless. The Indian unit is engaged in wireless product development, software engineering and product testing for its global parent.

I have always admired MindTree for two reasons - Mindtree lives by its values. It clearly articulates what it stands for in the software services market and it also clearly articulates its path towards growth. It has aimed to achieve $1 billion dollars by 2014. To achieve this vision, Mindtree has been actively working on identifying several growth engines that could propel the company towards its vision. And the recent acquisition is one such initiative. According to Asok Soota, the chairman of MindTree, the businesses that has the ability to contribute over 10% of revenue have been identified as growth engines.

This is not the interesting news...The news which I want to highlight is the capability that has been acquired by Mindtree due to this transaction and what are the new offerings that we can expect from Mindtree because of the new capabilities?

Yesterday, Mindtree has announced that it would enter in 3G Mobile Handset business. Yes, in the Phone Manufacturing business...Can u believe a software services company getting into the product business?. I just cant. I truly believe that companies are not just making inorganic moves just to make topline look good...but also making creating endeavors to establish their mark in the industry.

According to the press release, the new business will offer feature-rich, white-labeled mobile handsets to telecom service providers or original equipment manufacturers. The Kyocera team, acquired by Mindtree, has earlier delivered 45 million wireless phones and has extensive experience in 4G technologies like WiMax. It also has experience in getting the product manufactured by contracting partner ecosystem. MindTree has also emphasised that it is going to invest on generating IP in this new business.