Warburg Pincus leads race for Brookfield BPO

Warburg is competing with other investors such as BPEA EQT-backed Sagility and Veritas Capital, they added. If completed, the buyout will be the largest in India by Warburg Pincus, the fund that started the private equity rush in the country with its successful investment in Bharti Airtel. However, no exclusivity has been signed between the two parties. ET first reported on May 29 on Warburg Pincus’ interest in Everise.

In 2016, private equity fund Everstone had partnered with Sunrise BPO to launch Everise and expanded the business through multiple buyouts.

$500m Revenue Expected in CY23
Brookfield acquired Everise from Everstone in 2020 in a deal worth $450 million. After the transaction, Sunrise BPO co-founder and CEO Sudhir Agarwal became a minority stakeholder in Everise.

Everise is domiciled in Singapore and has its management team and headquarters in the US. It’s a global provider of technology-enabled, omnichannel customer management services to healthcare and other fast-growth technology business in travel and hospitality, media and communications, financial services, and logistics and supply chain.

Most of its business is healthcare centric. It combines customer and technical support, health insurance, AI-enabled services, robotic process automation, analytics and secure cloud-based technology services. The BPO had 16,253 employees at the end of December, proficient in 32 languages operating in eight countries. Its global centres are based in Guatemala, Ireland, India, Malaysia and the Philippines along with Singapore and the US.

Everise is expected to post revenue of $500 million and operating profit of $100 million in CY23, against $417 million revenue and $78 million ebitda in CY22, said people with knowledge of the matter. The top 10 customers accounted for about 75% of 2022 revenue, making for possible concentration risk. Revenue for fiscal 2022 grew 18% from the prior year.

Spokespersons at Brookfield, Veritas Capital and Warburg Pincus declined to comment. BPEA EQT did not respond to queries.

Morgan Stanley and BNP Paribas are advisers to the deal that had also seen interest from Blackstone, New Mountain, PAG and Teleperformance, said the people cited above.

The global customer experience (CX) BPO industry is highly fragmented despite accelerated consolidation among the largest companies and the entry of financial investors into the sector. In the context of the global CX BPO industry, Everise’ scale is limited with an estimated less than 1% of global market share.

Large global competitors include Teleperformance, Concentrix Corporation, Foundever Group S.A., Marnix, TELUS International and Atento Luxco.

“Scale is very important in the CX BPO. Large CX BPO providers can provide a relatively comprehensive service offering to large clients, including a diversified number of languages and flexibility in onshoring and offshoring,” Moody’s analysts said last month. “Additionally, large CX BPO providers should be the first to benefit from the trend among blue-chip customers towards vendor rationalisation.”

Despite its scale, Everise is able to compete against traditional providers in the fragmented CX BPO industry, offering high-quality dedicated customer care contact centres to fast-growing verticals with both voice and digital solutions. It has also attracted large well-known corporations through a customised approach with its solutions and services underpinned by its proprietary software.