Bengaluru: India’s top IT services and SaaS companies are on the acquisition trail abroad — and this time, the quarry is artificial intelligence. According to a Mint report published on October 21, top and mid-sized Indian firms are scouting AI and data-analytics targets generating $20-60 million in annual revenue across the United States, the United Kingdom and Western Europe, with transactions in the $100-200 million valuation range already underway.
The names in play illustrate how targeted the hunt has become. London-based cloud data and AI consultancy Datatonic is considering a stake sale and has drawn interest from leading Indian IT services firms, while Singapore-based platform company Mystifly has received interest in a deal likely to value it at over $100 million. These are not trophy mega-deals but capability acquisitions — buys designed to plug specific AI, data-engineering and platform gaps in the acquirers’ portfolios.
Bankers are describing a decisive shift in the M&A thesis. Executives at JM Financial, PwC India and EY India told Mint that deal-making logic has “shifted decisively toward data, AI and engineering” — a marked change from the digital-transformation and cloud-migration themes that drove the last acquisition wave. The message from the advisory community is that Indian IT’s next growth engine will be bought as much as built.
The precedents are already on the board. TCS’s $700 million acquisition of Coastal Cloud in December and Infosys’s purchase of Optimum Healthcare IT in May showed the industry’s willingness to write large cheques for specialised capabilities. The current wave of $100-200 million deals represents the same logic applied at a faster cadence — smaller, sharper bets on AI-native teams that can be scaled through the acquirers’ global delivery machinery.
The strategic context is impossible to miss. As enterprise clients redirect technology budgets toward AI implementation, Indian IT majors are under pressure to demonstrate credible AI credentials — not just partnerships and press releases, but proprietary assets, trained talent and reference clients. Acquiring a Datatonic or a Mystifly delivers all three overnight, compressing a multi-year build into a single transaction.
There is also a defensive dimension. Global competitors and private-equity-backed challengers are consolidating the same AI-services landscape; Indian firms that wait risk finding the best targets already taken. The $20-60 million revenue band is the sweet spot — large enough to matter, small enough to integrate without indigestion.
Valuations, bankers caution, remain demanding. AI assets command premium multiples, and auction processes for quality targets are competitive. But Indian IT’s balance sheets are formidable, and the strategic imperative is clear enough that boards are willing to pay up.
If the Mint reporting proves accurate, October 2026 may be remembered as the month India’s IT industry stopped talking about AI transformation and started buying it. The deals now in motion will shape competitive positioning for years — and the next earnings season will reveal which bets paid off.
