Infogain on Thursday acquired Bengaluru-based Nggawe Nirman Technologies (NNT), a cloud-native app development startup that helps clients build platforms.

Founded in 2017 by Phoenix-based Rao Sadhureddy and Santoshkumar Hanaji, NNT, the product engineering and digital transformation services provider, comes with expertise in Amazon Web Services (AWS) DevOps, Amazon cloud services to build and deliver cloud-native products, as well as leverages its experience in microservices architecture in Java and Python. NNT’s acquisition is expected to help Infogain leverage its customer base to scale up and provide mid-level technology leadership.

NNT CEO Rao Sadhureddy told YourStory, “The whole team is super excited to be part of this. They can actually operate at a bigger platform and contribute, while at the same time, grow. This is also going to get NNT employees to get some onsite opportunities because Infogain has a big customer base as well as clients who are large in scale. So it is going to be a win-win. That's how I see this transaction and we also want to contribute a lot to the success of Infogain's future.”

Commenting on the acquisition, Infogain CTO Sumant Ahuja said in the press release, “NNT's expertise in AWS cloud-native app development, containerisation, microservices and DevOps deepens our expertise across all three hyperscale clouds – Azure, GCP, and AWS.”

Both NNT and Infogain did not disclose the acquisition size.

The companies had been in talks to collaborate for a few projects prior to the acquisition. Rao adds that their synergy aligned with each company’s platform development and growth opportunities that Infogain’s customer base provides for NNT’s platform.

“The company size is not too huge that once we get in, we get lost; but it is not also small either. It's the perfect size for us to enter and scale,” added Rao.

The acquisition takes Infogain’s global employee base to over 6,000. This is the company's fourth acquisition since 2019 and in June 2021, Infogain announced its ownership transition from ChrysCapital to the Apax Funds.

Eddie Chandhok, Infogain’s Head of Global Delivery, Operations and M&A, said in the press release, “NNT's engineering strength is impressive, and I am confident that Rao and his team will add a new dimension to our cloud capabilities as we combine experience, cloud and AI for our combined client groups. We warmly welcome NNT's clients and employees to our fast-growing Infogain family.”

What does NNT do

NNT services customers in the manufacturing, fintech, edtech, healthcare, and software industries.

One of its customers is in the food industry has high-end engineering products. It has helped them build a scalable structure using its microservices architecture expertise, allowing the company to scale and resulting in its revenue increasing by nearly 40 percent in 2019-20. It also enables them to build an entire digital ecommerce platform.

The startup has about 12 customers across the globe, with a high concentration in North America, USA and Canada, as well as Australia. In India, it has no direct customers but works with its global client centres in the country.

NNT's clients include a billion-dollar Australia-based appliance and coffee exchange company, a US-based educational platform with more than 45 million users, and an industry-leading charitable donation platform company. NNT also has experience in blockchain, having designed and developed an AI services platform using Ethereum.

It also has expertise in blockchain, cryptocurrency and smart contracts as it has fintech customers moving towards it. It has about 400 team members with almost all of them located in Bengaluru with nearly 85 percent of its employees being engineering professionals, and 30 percent of this has over 15 years experience.

NNT currently had revenue growth of 80 percent year on year in the past year and 40 percent growth in the next few quarters from its existing customers. With this acquisition, it estimates growth of about 200 percent and onboard about 1,000 engineers.

Hiring from within India

Rao adds that the global market has been moving towards cloud-native applications and many legacy players are now opting to switch to the cloud with rising demand for engineering and native application development, especially with the inclusion of human-centred platforms and customer experience.

According to a NASSCOM report, India's IT-ITES talent base has been growing annually by 20 percent and the demand for digital talent is expected to increase at an average annual growth rate of 35 percent between 2019 and 2023.

“For the whole platform economy, there is probably so much demand that the only thing that concerns me is how can India produce engineers much faster,” said Rao

To cater to this, the company hires engineers from different parts of India and trains them on the basic and advanced skills needed to be part of the company to ensure that the team is qualified to cater to the needs of the market.