Wipro acquires German firm Cellent AG for Rs.520 crore

Wipro has acquired Cellent AG, a German IT consulting company, for €73.5 million (Rs.520 crore) in an all-cash deal..

Cellent, a privately held company, is part of Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, which is the parent of three commercial banks and the bank for some Federal States of Germany. It had revenues of €87 million at the end of 2014, according to a statement filed with the stock exchanges.

The deal is expected to be closed by the end of this financial year. Wipro’s subsidiary Wipro Cyprus has acquired 100 per cent of the shares.

With this acquisition, Wipro gets access to around 800 consultants based in the DACH region consisting of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in addition to scale in the region and customer relationships, especially in manufacturing and automotive areas.

“Cellent is a well-established player with marquee customers, a well-known brand and has strong local talent which will significantly boost our footprint in the DACH region, especially in the manufacturing and automotive domains,” said NS Bala, Chief Executive, Manufacturing and Hi-Tech, Wipro.

Industry watchers opine that this acquisition will help Wipro generate more stable revenues from Europe, whose contribution has come down from 27.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2015 fiscal year to 25.2 per cent in the just-ended September quarter.

This development comes four months after Wipro acquired Designit, a Danish firm that specialises in designing technology product and service experiences, which according to CEO TK Kurien, helped win two deals in the digital space in the last quarter.