EbixAcquires 80 PercentStake in ItzCashto Dominate the Indian DigitalPayments Market


Bengaluru: Ebix, Inc., a leading international supplier of On-Demand software and e-Commerce services to the insurance, financial, e-governance and healthcare industries, today announced that it has entered into a joint venture with India-based Essel Group, while acquiring an 80 percent stake in ItzCash, India’s leading payment solutions Exchange. ItzCash is recognized as a leader in the prepaid cards and bill payment space in India, and is the only profitable payments solutions provider out of all its peers, while having grown at a CAGR of 35 percent over the last three years. The acquisition is expected to be accretive to Ebix’s earnings within the next 6-9 months.

Under the terms of the agreement, ItzCash was valued at a total enterprise value of approximately 967.05 crore. Accordingly, Ebix acquired the stake in ItzCash for 773.64 crore including upfront cash of 489.97 crore and a contingent earn out of up to 283.67 crore payable over a period of three years from closing.

“We believe that the synergies between Ebix and ItzCash are at multiple levels and the ItzCash exchange when complemented with Ebix’s portfolio of insurance & healthcare services along with our international scale, will set the foundations of a very powerful and scalable business opportunity.” said Ebix Chairman, President & CEO, Robin Raina.

A driving force in the digitization of cash across India, ItzCash is a payment solutions platform that connects 75+ million consumers and 1,500+ corporate partners on its integrated payments solutions superhighway. With an Omni-channel strategy that encompasses a distribution network of 75,000+ physical retail outlets, the company today is recognized as a leader in the prepaid cards and bill payments space.

ItzCash processes approximately 600,000 transactions per day and close to 12,894.1crore in annual payment volume, with an industry leading transaction success rate of 99 percent.Having deployed 25,000 point of sale machines in the last five months, the company plans to deploy 100,000 point of sale wireless machines across the country providing a unique ability to serve as ATM outlets for payment withdrawal in small cities and rural areas where there is a paucity of ATM machines.

After a detailed due diligence and transaction support led by EY, Ebixwill retain the entire management team of ItzCashled by the Naveen Surya, the Managing Director. With Ravi Singh as Chief Business Officer, Dayton Creado as CTO, and Bhavik Vasa as Chief Growth Officer leading the Company’s growth initiatives across multiple channels, the Ebix - EsselGroup joint venture intends to empower this highly experienced trio of seasoned senior executives, under the leadership of Naveen to power ItzCash to become India’s largest Financial Exchange, with integrated offerings for insurance, healthcare and telemedicine.

“Ebix’s global reach and operations opens International expansion opportunities for ItzCash. We are keen to replicate our proven model, technology platform and operating experience to other emerging markets for financial services,” concludes Naveen.

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