Carlyle-backed Quest Global plans India IPO next year, CEO says

Mumbai, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Singapore-headquartered engineering services firm Quest Global is looking to go public in India in the next 12 to 18 months, betting on rising demand from energy and defence clients to fuel growth, its co-founder and CEO told Reuters.

The Carlyle-backed firm is seeking to ride a global move towards more complex hardware-embedded software services as traditional IT slows.

The planned listing reflects investor appetite for India’s Engineering, Research & Development segment, which offers technology support to global hardware-oriented industries such as data centres and self-driving tech. The segment accounts for around one-fifth of India’s $315 billion IT industry.

“The energy sector is going to grow quite a bit because all the data centres have to be powered by energy,” CEO Ajit Prabhu said on the sidelines of the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum in Mumbai this week.

This marks the first time Quest Global has publicly disclosed its IPO plans. Prabhu said the firm hasn’t decided whether the offering would involve a sale by existing investors, a fresh issue of shares, or a mix.

Quest Global expects revenue to rise to $2.5 billion over the next five years from $1.1 billion last year — an average annual growth rate of about 20%. It is also in the process of shifting its headquarters back to India through a reverse flip.

Prabhu said engineering R&D firms would outpace traditional IT services companies.

“(The) next five to ten years, in my opinion, are like a time for engineering renaissance,” Prabhu said. “It is a massive opportunity to bring together all of these technologies (including) chips, telecom, internet and AI.”

ER&D has been growing quicker than the wider sector; industry body Nasscom estimates a 6.8% growth to $63 billion in fiscal 2026, outstripping the core IT services sector’s 4.2% growth.

(Reporting by Sai Ishwarbharath B; Editing by Dhanya Skariachan and Sahal Muhammed)