Ebix acquires asset and wealth management software company Miles for $19 M
Global on-demand software provider Ebix Inc on Tuesday announced that it has signed the agreement to acquire Mumbai-based Miles Software for an amount of approximately $19 million as one of its Indian subsidiaries, with an additional contingent earnout of up to $8.5 million payable after two years.
The news comes a day after financial news portal MoneyControl had reported that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) department has conducted searches at the office of global payment company Ebix in Mumbai last week. The report had stated that the searches involved information on transactions on which tax up to Rs 20 crore may have been evaded.
Founded in 1999, Miles is a wealth and asset management on-demand software provider to banks, asset managers and wealth management firms. It claims to have more than 300 financial service customers across 18 different countries in Europe, Middle East and Southeast Asia.
After the acquisition, Miles Software will serve as Ebix’s investment, wealth and asset management division, with its products being interfaced across both EbixCash financial exchanges and EbixExchange insurance exchanges. All key Miles business executives have been retained as a part of the transaction.
Miles’s India customer base includes leading banks and financial institutions like Kotak Mahindra Bank, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Edelweiss, and Motilal Oswal etc.
In the financial year 2017, Miles had revenues of $8 million. Ebix believes that the business can continue to grow at the rate of 20 percent plus annually with operating margins of 30 percent or more, once fully integrated.
On the acquisition, Milan Ganatra, Founder and CEO of Miles Software said,
“Ebix offers us expansion possibilities that are truly exciting. Ebix’s expanse across the world and more specifically in North America, Australia, the UK and Brazil has the potential of opening up immense new opportunities for our products, as we interface them to Ebix CRM and other exchange solutions in these markets.”
Robin Raina, Chairman, President and CEO, Ebix, said,
“The addition of Miles to our EbixCash portfolio not only makes our financial exchange offering even more comprehensive, but also provides us with a senior management team that is proven and highly respected in the industry. I look forward to working with Milan in helping him expand the Miles footprint to United States, Australia and Brazil, while utilising our domain-focused sales and relationship-oriented folks in these markets.”
In June, 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.
