Carlyle Group acquires majority stake in Newgen KnowledgeWorks

Nasdaq-listed Carlyle Group has acquired a 54.85 per cent stake in Chennai-based provider of publishing and technical services Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt Ltd, for $32.8 million.

Carlyle, an alternative asset manager, acquired the stake from Franklin Templeton Private Equity Strategy, Aureos South Asia Fund and ePlanet Capital in Newgen. The equity for the transaction came in from First Carlyle Ventures III, an investment fund, Carlyle Group said in a statement.

This is the second time Carlyle is investing in Newgen. The alternative asset manager had earlier invested in the company in 2004 and later exited in 2011.

''Newgen has emerged as a preferred service provider for its clients due to its high service quality, efficiency and focus on automation. We are extremely happy to partner with Carlyle again, which engaged in numerous value creation activities and acted as a catalyst in the growth of the company during its previous stint with Newgen,'' said Prabhakar Ram, Founder and CEO of Newgen.

Newgen provides publishing and technical services for books and journals - from content creation till marketing - such as content sourcing, content creation, project management, author liaison, development editing, copy editing, design, artwork and permissions, typesetting and composition among others. It has production centres in India, the UK and the US.

''We were pleased with Carlyle's prior investment in Newgen, and we see the same potential for creating value through our latest investment. We will once again leverage Carlyle's deep industry expertise and global network to support Newgen through our renewed partnership,'' said Shankar Narayanan, managing director at Carlyle India.

Since 2000, Carlyle had invested about $1.1 billion of equity in about 30 transactions in India as of 30 September 2014.