Cigniti Technologies to acquire 100% stake in Aparaa Digital (RoundSqr)

6 May 2022 , 10:56 AM

Cigniti Technologies is set to acquire Aparaa Digital, a leading AI/ML, Data engineering, Analytics, and Blockchain services company that operates under the brand name RoundSqr. This is a firm step towards bolstering Cigniti’s strategic pursuit of becoming a specialized digital engineering and assurance services provider.

Founded by a group of industry leaders with extensive experience in managing medium to large digital transformation projects, Aparaa Digital (RoundSqr) is headquartered out of Hyderabad, India. Aparaa brings integrated enterprise digital transformation and consulting-driven expertise covering a gamut of AI and ML, data engineering, and Blockchain capabilities.

RoundSqr’s Zastra, (an active learning-AI based data annotation and MLOps platform), helps solve critical model validation challenges as ML models get to production in enterprises. This helps move past the last mile AI operational challenges with MLOps.

Speaking about this acquisition, Srikanth Chakkilam, CEO at Cigniti Technologies, said “Onboarding Aparaa Digital (RoundSqr) is in line with our strategy to expand our digital engineering capacity to provide a greater breadth and depth of services to our clients. This is a strategic and complimentary capability led acquisition for us.

The digital engineering market, valued at about $300 Billion annually, offers an explosive head room of growth for companies that have strong capabilities in Data & Analytics, AI & ML, and cloud engineering. Global 2000, platform, and digital native companies are looking to partner with service providers who can help them with these capabilities. This has become an essential requirement to accelerate digital transformation across industries.”

“I am glad to announce that the Board has approved the acquisition of Aparaa Digital Private Limited (RoundSqr) and its foreign subsidiaries namely RoundSqr Inc; USA, RoundSqr Pty Ltd; Australia for an all cash deal of $4.8mn,” said Cigniti’s CFO Mr. Krishnan Venkatachary. “This acquisition will lead to deeper and potentially multi-year engagements across our enterprise client base in the areas of digital engineering and assurance and will help us influence business and digital outcomes in our Fortune 500 and Global 2000 existing accounts,” he further said.

“At Cigniti we are willing to bet on IP-led services models, investing in innovative platforms that have a ripple effect to accelerate modern day digital assurance and digital engineering services for our esteemed customers. This acquisition helps us fill in all our criteria, and we are confident this will be a successful strategy for the future.” added Srikanth.

Kiran Kuchimanchi, CEO of Aparaa Digital (RoundSqr), said “We are extremely thrilled to join forces with Cigniti, a global leader in the digital assurance space. Our endeavor to help transform the business models of global organizations through byte-sized digital reimagination has received a strategic thrust through this acquisition.”

Kiran further added “We will help with the digital transformation journeys of Cigniti’s impressive customer base, including 80 of the Global 2000 companies. Our ability to reach new companies and help them with digital engineering services will be amplified through Cigniti’s global presence across 23 countries.

We will leverage Cigniti’s brand and expertise to attract the best of the talent across the world in the data engineering, AI/ML, Blockchain, and high-end product development space. This strategic move is in line with our like-minded thinking of Cigniti to help customers become Digital-First. This will also enable our digital native teams to enjoy unprecedented career growth. It throws a diverse set of opportunities to maximize our potential as a company, and our vision to bring disruptive innovation.”

At around 10;51 AM, Cigniti Technologies was trading at Rs418.25 apiece down by Rs9.95 or 2.32% on the BSE.