NTT sells controlling stake in Pune-based Nihilent to promoter
NTT Corporation has fully exited its 69.14% controlling stake in Pune-based IT consulting and services firm Nihilent Ltd selling it to the founder and promoter LC Singh.
While the exact deal size was not disclosed, in mid-2022, NTT was seeking a valuation for Nihilent at around Rs 2,500 crore ($314 million then).
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIM KozhikodeIIMK Advanced Data Science For ManagersVisitMITMIT Technology Leadership and InnovationVisitIIM LucknowIIML Executive Programme in FinTech, Banking & Applied Risk ManagementVisitExercising his first right of refusal, Singh bought back the 69.16% stake from NTT through a leveraged buyout with debt financing from a consortium of two funds — ICICI Prudential Corporate Credit Opportunities Fund AIF-I of ICICI Prudential Alternate Investments and Piramal Structured Credit Opportunities Fund, the performing credit fund of Piramal Alternatives, Singh confirmed to ET in an interaction.
The remaining stake continues to be held by Singh’s family, Nihilent’s top management executives and employees. It also has a pool for employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) of roughly 6.5% available for its employees.
NTT, which owned stake through its investment firm Hatch Investments (Mauritius), became Nihilent’s biggest shareholder in 2017 when it picked up a 34.6% stake from South Africa’s Adcorp Workforce Management Solutions, which used to jointly own Hatch Investments along with NTT-owned firm Dimension Data Protocol.
Explaining the rationale behind the acquisition, Singh, an industry veteran and also the executive vice chairman for the company, said that while over the years Indian IT sector has been instrumental in building
