Essar Closes Aegis BPO Sale to Capital Square Partners for $300M

Diversified conglomerate group on Monday agreed to sell its business process outsourcing company- Aegis to private equity firm, Capital Square Partners as the conglomerate looks to pay off debt. The deal is valued at about $300 million. It will help the group to get some relief off their debts.

Aegis had revenue of about $400 million and over 40,000 employees at the time of the agreement. The BPO company has 47 centres across 10 countries.

Essar had previously sold Aegis operations in the US, Philippines and Costa Rica to Teleperformance for $610 million. In total, Essar has made over $900 million from the sale. However, the current deal will mark Essar Global Ltd’s complete exit from the BPO business.

The transaction involves AGC Holdings Ltd, a Mauritius-based unit of Essar Global, selling ESM Holdings Ltd, the holding company of Aegis, to the Singapore-headquartered PE firm.

Aegis has revenue of around $400 million. It employs more than 40,000 people across 47 centres in 10 countries—India, the UAE, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa, Peru, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and theUK.

Essar’s Debt, Capital Square’s Deals

Essar Group has been selling assets and businesses to reduce its debt that Credit Suisse last year estimated topped $15 billion. The conglomerate last year agreed to sell its refining arm, Essar Oil Ltd, to a group led by Russian energy giant Rosneft for $12.9 billion, including about $4.5 billion of debt. The deal was targeted to close in March but has been delayed.

Capital Square is a private investment firm floated to deploy principal capital of Singapore-based entrepreneur-turned-investors Sanjay Chakrabarty and Aparup Sengupta. Chakrabarty was the founder and director of MobiApps.

Last year, Capital Square and Indian PE firm CX Partners sold India- and US-based BPO firm The Minacs Group Inc. to US-based Synnex Corporation for $420 million (Rs 2,800 crore then).

In another transaction last year, Capital Square acquired a majority stake in Indecomm Global Services, a Bangalore-based outsourcing services provider.