Reliance may acquire NIS Sparta

By siliconindia   |   Monday, 14 June 2004, 19:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: Reliance is learnt to be close to acquiring a majority stake in training company, NIS Sparta from NIIT promoters, Rajinder Pawar and Vijay Thadani, reports a business daily in India. NIS was originally promoted by NIIT in which it later divested its 76% stake in NIS to a company promoted personally by NIIT chairman Rajendra Pawar and the company CEO Vijay K Thadani. NIS will be working closely with Reliance Infocomm and petroleum employees and train about 100,000 people every year. Though NIS does not disclose its exact shareholding, Rajendra Pawar and Vijay Thadani, according to sources, hold close to 70% in the company through IQL and about 2% is with employees through ESOPs and the rest is held by Sanjeev Duggal, president, NIS Sparta. Insiders point out that NIS makes perfect business sense for Reliance as it has massive training needs with the organisation and could even generate an additional revenue stream as NIS has a thriving business, particularly in training government sector and public sector employees inlcuding Railways and Police Services. Its clients include M&M, ABN Amro, PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Thomas Cook, Birla-Sun Life. While Rajendra Pawar and Vijay Thadani refused to comment, Sanjeev Duggal denied stake sale but confirmed that NIS Sparta will train the Reliance Infocomm franchises and their staff and also train employees in the pertroleum division. “NIS will train about 100,000 employees in the Infocomm and petroleum,’’ he says. When contacted Reliance Capital managing director, Anand Jain also denied any information about the deal. Sources peg the valuation of the deal at about Rs 18 to Rs 19 crore. Interestingly, NIS Sparta had been valued at Rs 9.7 crore by Deloitte Haskins and Sells in 2001 before being hived off from NIIT and as per this valuation, NIIT’s 76 % stake would have fetched it Rs 7.37 crore then. NIS then accounted for 1.5% of revenue and 0.4% of profit before tax of NIIT.