The Hindu : Business : Tanla acquires major stake in Finnish firm

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Friday, Jun 06, 2008
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Tanla acquires major stake in Finnish firm

Special Correspondent

Balance stake to be purchased in two phases
The all-cash deal is valued at $18.6 m

HYDERABAD: Tanla Solutions announced here on Thursday that it had acquired 85 per cent stake in Openbit OY, a Finland-based on-device payments for mobile applications company, in an all-cash deal. Addressing a press conference here, Tanla’s Chairman and Managing Director Uday Reddy said Openbit was evaluated at $18.60 million. The remaining 15 per cent held by the Openbit management would be purchased in two tranches — five per cent and 10 per cent in the first and second year of purchase. Openbit recorded revenues of $15.88 million in 2007 and had cash equivalent of $3.04 million.

The acquisition would expand Tanla’s payment portfolio beyond operator billing products and could enable it to address emerging market for rich media and business applications on handsets.

Openbit provides software vendors and content distributors with efficient and secure means to distribute and process payment of mobile content for end-users. It had established global billing agreements with 90 operators in 30 countries. It has an installed base of over 20 million Symbian operating system-based Nokia handsets worldwide.

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