Quess Corp, an Indian staffing firm, announced yesterday that it has entered into definitive agreements to divest its stake in the digital risk and compliance services company Simpliance Technologies Private Limited to Aparajitha Corporate Services, an HR compliance services company and its affiliates.

The deal is valued at an enterprise value of INR 1.20 billion (USD 14.5 million) on a cash and debt-free basis, subject to closing adjustments and fulfilment of certain conditions.

Quess first announced its plan to acquire Simpliance in 2016, and it became a subsidiary in June 2018.

Guruprasad Srinivasan, Executive Director and Group CEO of Quess Corp, said, "In line with the corporate structure simplification process and rationalisation of business lines, we have divested our stake in Simpliance Technologies Private Limited. Quess helped the Simpliance team to build a comprehensive tech platform which provides total labour compliance solutions for digital India. While this has created great value for the shareholders of Quess, we are also happy that Simpliance has found a permanent home at Aparajitha Corporate Services."

Anil Prem D'Souza, Founder & CEO of Simpliance and an Indian Navy veteran, said, "Being a part of the Quess family since 2016 has helped us to build scale, leveraging the Quess' platform and their management expertise. We look forward to partnering with Aparajitha Corporate Services, to seamlessly integrate our SaaS (software as a service) offerings to create holistic bundled products for our customers across the value chain."

Nagaraj Krishnan, Managing Director, Aparajitha Corporate Services, said: "The combination with Simpliance will enable us to offer comprehensive compliance solutions, best-in-class services combined with digital tools and emerge as the undisputed leader in the labour, employee, industrial compliance segment. We welcome Anil and his team and intend to emerge as technology and data oriented compliance solution provider with strong regulatory domain expertise in India and other regions."