India's major IT firm HCL is looking for acquisitions of $1-2 billion companies and it is firm that it would be able to do so before 2011. Vineet Nayar, CEO HCL said that HCL has been perpetually looking at sub-$100 million acquisitions that would give it niche capabilities, and also accession to European and Japanese markets. And, moving a step ahead, HCL has hired a consultancy firm Bain to identify growth opportunities in world market.

 

HCL CEO expressed that his firm has been doing sub-$100 million deals so far, and now it would go for a large $1-2 billion acquisition in the US or Europe anytime before 2011. On the issue of funding of acquisition, he said that it is not a major issue as according to him HCL Technologies has close to $600 million in cash and no debt on its books.

 

According to Nayar, HCL is working on eight identified areas, particularly in the fields of engineering services, enterprise application services, enterprise transformation services and infrastructure services. He concluded that global financial crisis will make companies in Europe think for outsourcing to India as these would be forced to reduce their costs.