Porto-based Enabler was formerly the in-house IT department of Portuguese retail company Modelo Continente. After spinning out in 1997, the company focused on integrating and supporting Oracle’s retail system Retek. It has 300 employees and made 2005 sales of more than 30m euros ($38m) in full-year 2005.
The company has operations in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the Middle East, and also has an offshore delivery center in Brazil. Enabler’s largest client is its former parent company, with other customers including Tesco, Sabeco, and Galeries Lafayette.
Kees Ten Nijenhuis, head of Europe at Wipro, told Computer Business Review that more acquisitions are on the way and that the company would continue its focus on medium-sized target firms. This size of organization does not bring the same sort of corporate baggage that large vendors do, he said. We can let them work relatively independently within the overall Wipro structure, and it allows us to focus on business development rather than handling big organizational changes.
Ten Nijenhuis said the acquisition of Enabler would boost the size of its Oracle practice, which incorporates more than 2,000 staff worldwide. Langham Capital advized Wipro on the Enabler transaction, which is expected to close within the next month. Wipro will pay an initial 41m euros ($53m) in cash and cash equivalents, plus an unspecified two-year earn-out.
The takeover is Wipro’s fifth in the space of six months. It paid an undisclosed sum earlier this month for Michigan-based CAD services firm Quantech, and snapped up Californian consulting firm cMango Inc for $20m in February. Last December, Wipro spent $56m on Austrian semiconductor design company NewLogic, and bought payment services firm Mpower Inc for $28m.
Ten Nijenhuis did not rule out the possibility of the company making a significantly larger acquisition in the future, but said Wipro is successfully recruiting experienced sales and account management executives from the likes of IBM and Accenture to beef up its client-facing operations.
