News

Barings Private Equity Partners India has pumped in $4 million to pick up a sizeable equity stake in the Chennai-based Maples ESM Technologies, a remote IT infrastructure management company.

Maples' core business focus area is enterprise systems management (ESM) and enterprise application services (EAS). And to support these two consulting practices, it has a training division which serves as a feeder.

The company takes care of remote IT infrastructure management for high-end servers. While others in the business focus their attention on desktop and Linux management. Maples' focus is on mainframes, mid-range and IBM Unix boxes. It has its presence across several key IT cities in the country including Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune. It has also established a base in Sydney, Australia, and plans to have one on the US east coast by January 2006.

"We are a tier-II vendor, where there is not much of competition given our expertise to manage high-end tools, which has been a key focus area for the company. The present capital infusion from Barings will help us to aggressively move forward", Mr Ram Subramani, CMD, Maples ESM Technologies, told ET.

Veda Corporate Advisors facilitated the investment by Baring. As for ESM, Maples manages the complexity of OS, database and networks for big brands like IBM and Standard Chartered. "Our client list includes almost all the IT majors including Infosys, Wipro and TCS", Mr Subramani said.

It currently has 400 people, with over 350 of them in consulting services. About 35 are in the training division. "The number of people will increase to 800 by March 2006, and by the end of December that year, we will aggressively grow to 1,500 people", he pointed out.

Maples, which clocked a turnover of about Rs 10 crore last year, hopes to close this fiscal with a topline of close to Rs 16 crore. "With the increased head count over the next year, we hope to reach a turnover of Rs 45 crore to Rs 50 crore during 2006-07", he said.