Lumine Group | Tarantula Acquisition Case Study

Background

Founded in 2000 by Ravi Kuppan, Tarantula Global Holdings Pte. Ltd. is a global provider of tower management software to towercos and telcos. In its early stages, Ravi developed a Site Sharing portal for operators to share site details in order to promote co-location and site management. After a few years of early growth with the Site Share product and related professional services, Vaibhav Kulkarni joined Tarantula’s leadership team as CTO.

In 2005, Vaibhav and Ravi identiﬁed a growth potential opportunity in the towerco market, recognizing that there was no software available to manage tower assets. Eager to pursue this opportunity, Ravi created custom tower management solutions in 2007 to serve 3 major tower operators in India.

Between 2008 and 2012 the company continued to serve the Indian market and to make further inroads in Europe. In 2014, Udhay Mathialagan joined Tarantula’s leadership as CEO to assist in the commercialization and geographic expansion of the business. Over the following three years, the customer footprint in South East Asia, Europe, and Africa was expanded to increase from 10 countries to 20 countries.
At the time of the acquisition, Tarantula is the leading telecom site asset management solution in the global market due to its unique purpose-built colocation management capabilities. The business maintains a particularly high market share in India and South East Asia, and as such, they operate both of their primary ofﬁces out of these locations.

The Search for the Right Acquirer

In 2016, Udhay embarked on a sale process with a vision to grow the business further. Due to the nature of the telecom tower market, Udhay knew an acquirer of mid-market software businesses would be the best solution for Tarantula.

3 Reasons Tarantula Chose Lumine

Synergies within Lumine

Tarantula was intrigued by the opportunity to explore synergies with the existing portfolio of communications businesses. These likeminded businesses could provide exposure to new potential customers, and the opportunity to share best practices within similar business operations and challenges.

Vision to Scale

Lumine Group provides access to industry-leading processes, templates and tools (the “Playbook”) to boost the efﬁciency of strengthening, growing and operating sustainably proﬁtable and growing vertical market software businesses. Along with the Playbook, Lumine provides training, mentoring and peer networking.

Experience & Certainty to Close

At the time of the acquisition, Lumine, along with our parent company Lumine Group, had completed over 50 acquisitions since 1995, working closely clients globally and with a 95%+ seller satisfaction rate. Tarantula saw value in the certainty and timeliness of execution by Lumine Group, an acquirer having completed 50+ past transactions.

Life Post-Acquisition

Following the integration, Tarantula has comfortably settled into life under Lumine Group and the business continues to run as usual. Vaibhav, Ravi, and Udhay all remain leading the business forward, working closely with the leadership team at Lumine to achieve the global growth they envision for Tarantula. Over the next months, they will be tapping into new geographies and expanding further in the South East Asian Market.

Tarantula was acquired by Lumine Group in 2017.

This case study was written in 2017.

Tarantula finds synergies and growth opportunities with Lumine Group