Exclusive: Miles Software founder Milan Ganatra exits Ebix, may start fintech venture

Milan Ganatra, founder of Mumbai based Miles Software Solutions which was acquired by Ebix, has exited the Nasdaq listed company and is likely to start up again with a fintech venture, a person aware of the development told TechCircle. 

Ganatra founded Miles Software in 1998 to provide on-demand wealth and asset management software to banks and asset managers. His upcoming new fintech venture will not operate in the same space as Miles Software, the person cited above said. 

When Ebix bought the company in 2018, it was announced that the deal involved a $19 million payout with an additional contingent earn-out of up to $8.5 million, to be paid two years the from acquisition. The conditional earn-out was due last year.  

Post-acquisition, Miles Software operated like an independent entity as the earn-out was linked to its top line growth. It delivered an EBITA margin of approximately 45% in the two years since the acquisition, up from about 20%. Its top line grew about 80-85%, the person cited above said. 

At the time of the acquisition, the company was majority owned by Ganatra. Private equity funds Zephyr Peacock and Lighthouse owned a combined 27% stake. The two investors had put in about Rs 30 crore in total and raked in returns of approximately 3X in rupee terms for their 2008 investment. 

Email queries to Ebix did not elicit responses at the time of publishing this article. 

Miles Software currently has more than 200 enterprise customers across Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Motilal Oswal, SBI, Kotak Mahindra Bank, ICICI, Standard Chartered Bank, Barclays, DBS, IndusInd Bank are among its clientele. 

Atlanta-based Ebix offers software and provides e-commerce services for the insurance, financial, healthcare industries.  

Last year, its acquisition bid for travel company Yatra Online, fell through after the latter filed a lawsuit against Ebix in a US court over breaches of the proposed merger agreement. Ebix had entered into a definitive agreement with Yatra in July 2019 to acquire the latter at an enterprise value of $337.8 million, which marked its largest acquisition in terms of ticket size.