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By: Bailey McCann, Private Equity Strategies

Partners Group, a Swiss investment manager, has acquired a majority stake in CSS Corp on behalf of its clients in a $270 million transaction. CSS Corp, is a global technology support services company. The company serves a client base in the US and Europe and has a large delivery presence in India, the US, the Philippines, Poland, Mauritius, Costa Rica and China.

"We have a high opinion of the management team, and have conviction about the business’ growth potential,” Cyrus Driver, Managing Director, Partners Group, tells Private Equity Strategies.

CSS Corp was founded in 1996, and is now a world leader in technology support services with service delivery centers in 13 locations worldwide. CSS Corp’s CEO, “Tiger” TG Ramesh, has assembled a hand-picked team of executives from multi-billion dollar IT firms to drive a global expansion strategy. Driver explains that Partners Group saw an opportunity to provide growth equity financing for this next phase.

The focus of this transaction will be to build-out sales and further expand the firm’s service footprint by adding delivery centers in new geographies. CSS Corp will focus on building its business in analytics-led customer support, mobility, virtualization and telecom services.

“A large majority of CSS customers are based in the US but they also service customers in Europe and Asia. We think that the business will benefit from untapped growth opportunities in Latin America, that we can help access,” Driver says.

According to Driver, the interest in CSS stems from being able to expand into emerging markets. “We are not restricted by industry. Across industries, we seek investment opportunities in midcap businesses that straddle emerging and developed markets and that we can help grow to the next level. We continue to see a lot of opportunities in emerging markets. We recognize that emerging markets are no longer undiscovered and hence investors need to generate alpha to drive returns. We focus on investments with development potential and which we can add substantial value to.”

Partners has approximately EUR 28bn in investment programs under management in private equity, private real estate, private infrastructure and private debt.