Capgemini buys outsourcing company WNS for $3.3billion in AI push

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. 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 listed on NYSE, 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 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. 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."

Keshav R Murugesh, CEO of WNS, said, "By combining our 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."

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.

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