Bengaluru headquartered business services provider Quess Corp which responded to SEBI’s request for clarifications on the company’s proposed ₹400-crore initial public offering in March, has received the go-ahead from the capital market regulator. Quess Corp is co-owned by Thomas Cook (India), and is promoted by Fairfax Financial and Ajit Isaac. “We filed the DRHP (Draft Red Herring Prospectus) for our IPO with SEBI on February 2 and received a request from SEBI for the first set of clarifications in the first week of March, which we responded to later that month. We received SEBI approval for the IPO on April 26 and will go to the markets in mid-June,” Ajit Isaac, Chairman & MD, Quess Corp, told BusinessLine . The company has hired Axis Capital, ICICI Securities, IIFL Holdings and YES Securities to manage the issue.

₹3,300 cr revenue Founded in FY2008, Quess Corp generates a revenue run rate that got the company to $500 million (₹3,300 crore) by March 31, 2016, through its four business divisions — global technology solutions, people & services, integrated facilities management and industrial asset management. The company had initiated an internal project a few years ago, where they set a target to achieve 8 per cent margins by 2018 from 2 per cent four years ago, at a revenue base of $1 billion or ₹5,000 crore, when the going rate of the dollar was ₹50.

Pointing out that the company has grown 9x over the last five years, at a compounded annual growth rate of 65 per cent, Isaac said, “Our return on capital employed (ROCE) is a high 28 per cent as we use capital very frugally. We have grown entirely out of internal accruals and have never borrowed money to acquire companies; and 95 per cent of our revenues are annuity in nature, creating a huge predictability to our revenue streams.”

He said, the money from the IPO will give the company “acquisition currency,” to do more acquisitions in the future.

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