The bank is providing the majority of a $56m funding package for Antuit, which provides data analytics in the fields of marketing, sales and supply chains. Indian investor Zodius Capital, which has already bought into the firm, is also providing part of the funding.
Antuit is set to use the funding to make a series of acquisitions in its path towards growth, staving off potential competition from US big data companies that could move into Asia in the future. Goldman Sachs’ co-head of private equity for the region, Ankur Sahu, is taking up a place on the company’s board.
The company has already expanded beyond Asia with offices in the US and
New Zealand
“The rapidly growing $10bn-plus big data services market is ripe to be organised and consolidated under a market leader”, Arijit Sengupta, Antuit CEO, said in a statement. “Goldman Sachs, an experienced investor in technology and services, brings us not only capital, but also deep expertise around how to grow into such a company and a global network of corporate relationships which will be instrumental to Antuit’s success.”
The company has already expanded beyond Asia with offices in the US and New Zealand. Its presence in Singapore and India put it in the fairly unique position of being able to source relatively cheap, Asia-based data analysts for its clients – such as Hyatt Hotels – from across the world.
Singapore has been emerging as the data hub for Asia over recent years, with the industry set to account for $750m of its economy by 2018 according to the government, the FT reports.
Goldman Sachs has already pumped significant investment into the field in the US, providing $100m to cloud-based Applied Predictive Technologies in 2013 and $90m to AvePoint in 2014. This marks its first steps into it’s the sector in Asia, however, and it’s likely to help drive substantial growth in both Singapore and beyond.
