Venture Infotek: Venture Infotek Indian payment processor acquired by Atos Origin

Venture Infotek Indian payment processor acquired by Atos Origin which is an international IT services company. Atos Origin today announced the acquisition of Venture Infotek, the leading independent player in the Indian payment market in a deal that is likely to be around $100 million. This will be the largest deal in the payment space, bigger than KKR’s acquisition of ICICI Bank’s merchant acquiring business. KKR-owned First Data Corporation had last year acquired ICICI Bank’s network of credit card swipe machines and the bank’s back office processing division for $90 million.

ICICI Bank had hived off its 1.5 lakh swipe machines into a separate company ICICI Merchant services, and sold 80% of the shares of this company to KKR. Ramanan Raghavendra promoted Kubera Partners, which acquired a 40% stake in Venture Infotek after buying out private equity investor Warburg Pincus in 2007, is also selling out to Atos. Avendus is the investment banker of Venture Infotek for the deal. Atos is understood to have multiple investment bankers as consultants.

Venture Infotek is promoted by Dhruv and Piyush Khaitan’s who started out marketing swipe machines and plastic for cards to card-issuing banks. In the early ’90s, the promoters set up a joint venture with Equifax of US to provide complete back office solutions to a bank issuing credit cards.

Created in 1991, Venture Infotek operates in merchant acquiring, card processing, loyalty programs, government benefits programs and ATM management on behalf of the Indian Banks and major retailers. Venture Infotek operates in the major cities of India. Atos Origin has been attracted by the entrepreneurial spirit of Venture Infotek, by the quality of its technological platforms and by the portfolio of its existing customers.

The company expects revenue of EUR 30 million for the next fiscal year. The annual average growth rate was 35% over the last three years. The company employs almost 500 staff.

Atos Origin is a leading international Information Technology (IT) services company, providing Hi-Tech Transactional Services, Consulting, Systems Integration and Managed Services to deliver business outcomes globally. The company’s annual revenues are EUR 5.1 billion and it employs 49,000 people. Atos Origin is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic Games and has a client base of international companies across all sectors. Atos Origin is quoted on the Paris Eurolist Market and trades as Atos Origin, Atos Worldline and Atos Consulting.

Venture Infotek is in the same line of business as ICICI Merchant Services, besides a host of other payment-related services. The company provides end-to-end card payment processing solutions for both — banks that issue credit cards and those banks with whom the merchants having the point-of-sales terminals.

The key difference between Venture Infotek and ICICI Merchant Services is that Venture Infotek does not own point of sales terminals and most of the swipe machines managed by the company belong to Axis Bank.

Venture Infotek also gets significant revenues from managing petro credit cards for state-owned oil companies. The company processes 150 million card transactions annually worth `35,000 crore. A host of banks also outsource their billing and card issuance programmes to the company, which issues over 50 lakh payment and loyalty cards.

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