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CHENNAI, April 18

MA Foi Management Consultants Ltd, the city-based HR (Human Resources) service provider, is scouting for a strategic investor, to whom the company would give 5-10 per cent of the equity.

Mr K. Pandia Rajan, Managing Director, Ma Foi, told newspersons here that the potential strategic investor would be among the top HR consulting firms, and not having a presence in India.

The strategic investor, who need not be a venture capitalist, would provide clients to Ma Foi for overseas recruitment, he said.

The current equity in the company is Rs 6 crore, and the company might increase it to Rs 7 crore, and later to Rs 10 crore. The additional equity would be provided to the strategic partner, he said

Last year, Ma Foi received Rs 4 crore, for a 12 per cent equity stake, in a third round funding from CanVenture, a division of Canbank Venture Capital Fund Ltd.

Earlier, the company raised Rs 4.4 crore in two rounds from Usha Martin Ventures and the UK-based Metdist Ltd, for a combined holding of 15 per cent. Mr Rajan and his wife hold 51 per cent stake in the company.

According to Mr Rajan, the company also plans to acquire a small recruitment firm having domain expertise in education and health care, which offer good business opportunities. The likely investment in the acquisition would be over Rs 1 crore, and would be done through internal accruals, he added.

For the year ended March 31, Ma Foi reported a net profit of Rs 62.5 lakh on gross revenue of Rs 23.09 crore.

Due to tight operating conditions, the net profit increased only by 23 per cent, while the company expected to do a lot better.

"We set a revenue target of Rs 30 crore, but fell short. Other than the industry downturn, our own bandwidth was not good. We are strengthening the financial control this year and adopt tight cost-based budgeting," he said.

During 2001-02, Ma Foi saw a drop in revenue from information technology/IT-enabled services to 35 per cent (40 per cent), while revenue from telecom increased to 9 per cent (3 three per cent), and consumer/retail to 13 per cent (5 per cent), he said.

The agro-related sector dropped to 3 per cent, from 22 per cent the previous year, he added.

For the year 2002-03, the company plans to achieve a turnover of Rs 41.4 crore.

The revenue would mainly come from the international operations including Europe and the West Asia, and from sectors such as ITES, IT, education, healthcare, telecom and consumer retail.

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