Tech Mahindra acquires European IT firm CTC for ₹2,628 crore

Software services firm Tech Mahindra on Monday acquired Europe-based IT solutions provider Com Tec Co IT Ltd (CTC) for ₹2,628 crore. The deal includes earnouts and synergy linked payouts.

Tech Mahindra, which made the acquisition through its wholly owned subsidiary -- Tech Mahindra London, said the deal will enable it to tap into the potential industry disruption in the insurance sector.

The acquisition, it said, will expand its offerings to high-end digital engineering services for some of the largest insurance, re-insurance and financial services organisations globally and scale its nearshore delivery presence.

CTC, which has development centres in Latvia and Belarus, caters to the insurance and financial services industry. It offers digital services like product engineering, cloud, artificial intelligence, and machine learning among others.

The company also announced its plan to invest $22.8 million, in Swift and Surance, for a 25% ownership in each of these two insurtech ventures funded by the same founding group as CTC.

Swift, a software as a service (SaaS)-based digital customer engagement platform, offers multiple functionalities for insurance sales and distribution and is designed for digital brokers, price comparison websites, and insurers wanting to directly reach their customers through digital channels.

Surance is an end-to-end personal cyber insurance solution that focuses on vulnerability assessment, cyber protection, and cyber insurance coverage.

Tech Mahindra said its investment in Swift and Surance will be utilised towards geographical expansion into large insurance markets, building dedicated sales and marketing team and ongoing new feature and functionality enhancement.

“We are investing in strengthening our capabilities to support insurers in accelerating their transition to cloud-based platforms and provide end-to-end engineering with a strong European nearshore presence,” says Vivek Agarwal, president - of BFSI, HLS, and Corporate Development at Tech Mahindra. “CTC's expertise and experience in delivering marquee solutions for customers will complement Tech Mahindra's offering to provide end-to-end digital engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning and DevSecOps capabilities.”

The acquisition will also help Tech Mahindra to scale its European presence with over 700 highly skilled IT professionals in contemporary technologies and processes, it said.

“Becoming a part of a global entity like Tech Mahindra will give us immediate access to global scale and create a tremendous growth and development opportunity for our people and the business,” says Avraham Shaked, cofounder of CTC.

The business, according to the IT firm, will be co-branded as Tech Mahindra CTC and an integrated management team will be responsible for its operations. The team, it said, will focus on driving identified areas of synergy – including but not limited to cross-sell and scale up of digital engineering capabilities.