Austrian firm buys Bangalore-based ECAD Tech

Austria-based manufacturer of branded circuit boards, Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik AG (AT&S) has acquired ECAD Technologies, a Bangalore-based IT company, for a total consideration of Rs 7.5 crore (Rs 75 million), it was announced on Friday.

SIDBI Venture Capital Ltd (SVCL) and Karnataka IT Venture Capital Fund (KITVEN) had invested Rs 2 crore (Rs 20 million) and Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million), respectively, in ECAD over a period from 2001 and 'now they have exited', officials said at a news conference.

ECAD was promoted by S L N Murthy, an ex-Bharat Electronics Limited executive and others in September 1997.

It is mainly engaged in design, simulation, testing of high-end printed circuit board used in critical applications, they said.

AT&S is said to be a Euro 332 million firm and Europe's largest supplier of printed circuit boards.

SVCL Chairman N Balasubramanian said investment in ECAD was made by SVCL out of Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) National Venture Fund for Software and Information Technology, a venture capital fund launched in 1999.

Balasubramanian said the Fund had committed investments aggregating Rs 75 crore in respect of 30 early stage companies in various segments of software and IT industries.

"We expect to commit the remaining investible corpus of the Fund entirely during the current year," he said. "We expect to achieve a few more exits during the current financial year."

An SVCL statement said ECAD's customer list includes Texas Instruments, BEL, HAL and ISRO.