Capgemini acquires WNS for $3.3bn to scale up expertise

Time of India

a day ago

Bengaluru: India's French connection is growing stronger. French IT services firm Capgemini, which has more than half of its 3.4 lakh employees in India, is acquiring one of the country's business process management (BPM) pioneers, WNS, for $3.3 billion.
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The move is seen as an attempt to bring strong technology expertise, especially AI, into BPM services to be able to offer enterprises much more comprehensive solutions.
This acquisition comes a decade after Capgemini acquired Igate, another India-based IT company, for $4 billion. The WNS deal underscores India's growing importance in Capgemini's global strategy. Over 44,000 of WNS' 65,000 employees are based in India.
WNS, founded in 1996 and which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, counts United Airlines, Aviva, M&T Bank, Centrica and McCain Foods among its key customers.
It was initially established as a captive business process and back-office unit of British Airways. In 2002, Warburg Pincus acquired a majority stake, leading to WNS becoming an independent entity.
WNS will add $1.2 billion to Capgemini's revenue of about 22.1 billion euro last fiscal.
The two together will have an operating margin of about 13.6%. Capgemini will acquire WNS for a cash consideration of $76.5 per share, reflecting a premium of 17% over the closing price on July 3.
Explaining the rationale of the acquisition, Capgemini CEO Aiman Ezzat said enterprises are rapidly adopting generative AI and agentic AI to transform their operations end-to-end, and business process services will be the showcase for agentic AI.
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The acquisition, he said, will "provide the group with the scale and vertical sector expertise to capture that rapidly emerging strategic opportunity created by the paradigm shift from traditional BPS to agentic AI-powered Intelligent Operations.
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Keshav R Murugesh, CEO of WNS, said, "By combining our deep domain and process expertise with Capgemini's global reach, cutting-edge GenAI and agentic AI capabilities, a robust partner ecosystem, and advanced technology platforms, we are creating a powerful proposition that accelerates enterprise reinvention.
WNS' complementary portfolio of horizontal and industry-specific solutions will significantly enhance Capgemini's rapidly growing business services footprint, enabling next-generation, data-driven operations across sectors.
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WNS has delivered an average constant currency revenue growth of over 9% over the past three fiscal years, reaching $1.2 billion in revenue in the 2025 financial year with an operating margin of 18.7%.
The transaction will position Capgemini as one of the key players in digital BPS. With combined digital BPS revenues of 1.9 billion in 2024, Capgemini will be better equipped to support clients in their end-to-end business and technology transformation journeys.
WNS also helps Capgemini expand more into the US and UK. Currently, about 51% of its revenue comes from Continental Europe.
Phil Fersht, CEO of IT consulting firm HfS Research, said that from a competitive perspective, another potential big win for Capgemini is its new positioning against the Big 4 (Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG), which have traditionally dominated consulting and technology services.
"With WNS's operational expertise integrated into its offerings, Capgemini could deliver end-to-end transformation services that the Big 4 cannot – and at lower price points.
In some cases, like procurement services, Capgemini acquires a well-established strategic sourcing capability built on WNS's 2017 Denali acquisition, strengthening Capgemini's F&A and procurement capabilities."
Fersht said he would expect Murugesh to stay in the company in the short term to work on the transition with Capgemini leadership, but it may eventually opt to turn to the vast BPO leadership of Kevin Campbell, who recently joined Capgemini through the Syniti acquisition.
"Campbell was one of the original pioneers of merging BPO and IT services when he led that function during Accenture's growth years," Fersht noted.
Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, partner in Catalincs and former Cognizant India CMD, said the acquisition is a profound validation of how much technology is front-and-centre for the reimagination of business operations and processes, more so in the context of generative AI and agentic AI.
"While traditional IT companies have organically built their BPO businesses to several billions of dollars in revenue, specialist BPO companies have struggled to build out their technology capabilities. In many cases, even acquisitions have not come to their rescue," he said. Capgemini anticipates achieving revenue synergies in the range of 100 million to 140 million on a run-rate basis by 2027 end.