Ebix acquires enterprise lending software company Indus for $29 M

Global on-demand software provider Ebix Inc on Friday announced the acquisition of Indus Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Indus), a global provider of enterprise lending software solutions to financial institutions, captive auto finance and telecom companies, for approximately $29 million, including $5 million of contingent earn-out.

According to a press statement, Indus will be tightly integrated in Ebix’s financial exchange EbixCash.

Further to this acquisition, key Indus business executives will become a part of the combined EbixCash senior leadership. The acquisition will increase the employee strength of Ebix in India by 900, to approximately 7,200 employees.

Founded in 1990, Indus offers a specialised suite of products and technology solutions for banking and finance, telecom and insurance industries. With more than 150 enterprise lending implementations in 15 languages across 50 plus countries, Indus derives 56 percent of its revenues from India and the balance coming primarily from Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

In the financial year 2017, Indus had revenues of $22 million.

Some of the clients for Indus include Standard Chartered Bank, Societe Generale, Canara Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Doha Bank, United Arab Bank, Dubai First Bank, IDFC Bank, amongst others. For captive auto finance, clients like Isuzu Leasing, Volvo, Toyota Financial Services, BMW, Nissan, Volkswagen and HeroFinCorp use Indus’s software products.

Speaking on the acquisition, Ebix Chairman, President and CEO Robin Raina said,

“We have always believed that lending is a must-have functionality for any leading end-to-end financial exchange. Accordingly, in our vision plan for EbixCash, with respect to the area of lending, we see three opportunities: one - powering the technology for lenders in any industry, two – creating a person-to-person lending exchange that can be available over the web, e-wallets, mobile phones, white label corporate intranets and EbixCash outlets to consumers, and three – lending services for our EbixCash outlets that allows them the power to borrow and expand their business with EbixCash. The acquisition of Indus is a step in the direction of accomplishing the first step of that vision plan.”

Further, Robin added that Indus provides Ebix with the ability to interface a person-to-person (P2P) lending exchange into the back-end systems of top lenders in the marketplace and move data seamlessly across front-end and back-end systems.

In May last year, Ebix Inc. has acquired a majority stake in payments services firm ItzCash for Rs 800 crore (approximately $124 million) from Essel Group and other shareholders. After the acquisition, the Indian arm of the company was renamed 'EbixCash'.

At present, EbixCash sees domestic remittance volumes of approximately $100 million per month.

Just last month, Ebix announced that it had completed the process of acquiring India-based foreign exchange service provider CentrumDirect Limited for $175 million. Last November, Ebix had stated that it had acquired online travel portal Via.com for $75 million. The acquisition was not just to enter the travel space but also to add another 100,000 retail outlets to EbixCash.

Before that, Ebix acquired the money remittance business of Transcorp International Limited, for approximately $7.4 million, through its Indian subsidiary EbixCash, in an all-cash deal.