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Quest mulls listing & acquisition

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: Engineering solutions provider, Quest is planning to go public to raise capital and increase visibility in the market place both domestic and overseas. "We might go public in the next two to three years time frame and the market has certainly matured to accept a company like us," said Aravind Melligeri, President of Quest, which he founded along with now CEO of the company Ajit Prabhu in 1997.



Having posted a revenue of $20 million last year, Quest has been consistently posting 30 percent growth, according to Melligeri. However, he expects the company to be about $100 million in revenue, when it goes public. "We are looking for inorganic growth through acquisitions, which should scale up our revenues to $100 million before we go public," added Melligeri.



The company had acquired Lexcel Engineering, a US based automobile engineering solutions firm in 2000 and expects to finalize another acquisition within the next six to eight months, outside India. For acquisitions, Quest is looking for engineering solutions companies with a good clientele as part of its efforts to add Fortune customers in the verticals it services. Power generation, aerospace, oil and gas, industrial and automotive are the verticals the company is currently focussing on and plans to add services in these verticals rather than add verticals itself.



About 530 strong, with 430 employees in India, Quest plans to add 300 more within the next nine months. To accommodate the projected additional recruits, the company is planning to set up a new facility either in Whitefield or Sarjapur Road at an investment of $ three million. It already has a 500-seat facility in Whitefield near ITPL. "Most of the investments will be on non-physical infrastructure like software and tools for a pure play engineering solutions company like us instead of only brick and mortar," commented Melligeri.



Earlier this year, Quest had received a funding of $ six million from US based investor, Carlyle and is quite confident that it would be able to raise more funds if needed through the same investor. Undeterred by the growth of IT services and BPO boom, Quest plans to remain an engineering solutions company.

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