CEO Saurabh Sinha

Updated 10 March 2020: Today, emids announced investment of undisclosed magnitude from Blue Cross Blue Shield Venture Partners (the Blue Venture Fund). In September 2019, emids announced investment of undisclosed magnitude from NYC-based New Mountain Capital. Our Aug. 15, 2017 story is below.-Ed.

EMIDS Technologies, the healthcare IT, solutions and consulting company based in Nashville and Bangalore, is likely to consider further strategic options roughly a year from now, after it integrates recently acquired Encore Health Resources, formerly based in Dallas.

Co-Founder and CEO Saurabh Sinha told Venture Nashville that emids is approached on average once each month by suitors, including a mix of potential strategic and private-equity bidders.

Simultaneously, he said the company remains alert to further M&A opportunities and is more likely to buy proven businesses with solutions that remove costs from business processes than to acquire technology, alone.

The emids pipeline of M&A prospects is overseen by Nashville-based CFO Gaurav Agarwal CPA, who joined the company in 2015.

In that context, Sinha said the company views sector valuations as "still pretty reasonable," adding that valuations vary markedly between "legacy" companies positioned to provide traditional IT services, versus tech providers that are actively participating in their clients' journeys amid the transformation of healthcare.

The company's workforce in the U.S. and India now totals approximately 1,600, including 400 in the U.S. and nearly 100% of the balance in India. In May, the company announced it is developing a London presence.

Sinha declined to provide projected 2017 revenue. VNC research suggests that the recently announced emids and Encore combination, which sharply expanded emids' consulting practice, is now likely generating more than $100MM annual revenue.

Since its inception in 1999 by Sinha and Co-Founder and EVP Arnab Chatterjee, the company raised $13.3MM in outside capital via a 2013-14 recapitalization funded by Nashville-based Council Capital and Milwaukee-based Baird Capital. And, less than a month ago, the company filed on a $4.9MM raise. Both filings were via Specialist Resources Global. Sinha said the company has no plans for recruiting additional investors.

Sinha emphasized that emids is "anchored" in its Nashville hub and continues hiring apace.

He noted that while Nashville has little surplus talent of the sort that emids requires, the company has in the past five years found it increasingly easy to attract strong candidates from elsewhere to fill tech openings, notwithstanding the fact that Nashville is still not widely viewed as "a tech hub or an innovation hub."

The best job candidates are no longer simply "aware" of Nashville; rather, people have in recent years become much more "open-minded" about Nashville and are making very deliberate comparisons of the city with other options.

Going forward, the company is keen to add "nextgen productivity enhancement talent," with skillsets spanning machine learning, artificial intelligence, automation and related domains.

The company's needs will continue to evolve along with priorities: For example, emids is focused strongly on shaping its response to such innovations as Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain.

Each of those technologies is "transformative in nature," independently of one another, in that they may represent parts of the solution to the problem of getting personal health data from patients to providers, and more.

Sinha said the company is likely to introduce later this year a proprietary IoT solution for use in the healthcare sector. And, emids may have news on the Blockchain front, in 2018.

Asked his greatest recruitment challenge, Sinha immediately said that while he has utmost confidence in his own seven direct-reports, the toughest task companywide is that of expanding emids' ranks of tech-services-savvy VPs and/or senior directors.

Asked whether emids might turn to outside advisers as it considers strategic options, Sinha said tapping such resources would be considered as one option.

The company's advisors currently include attorneys with Nelson Mullins and accountants with Deloitte, KPMG and KNAV (Atlanta). emids banks with CapStar Bank and its PR is handled by Jarrard.

The company plans to relocate its roughly 12,000 sq. ft. headquarters in November to Franklin's Seaboard Lane from Royal Parkway in Davidson County. Sinha also said the company is considering expanding to another city in India, in addition to its Bangalore base.

Asked about competitors, Sinha named Accenture, Deloitte and Nordic IT among majors, as well as Franklin-based HCTec, a 2012 spinoff from HCCA International, which had itself been founded in 1993.

Sinha is a member of the Nashville Health Care Council board of directors and in 2011 he was recognized by NextNashville as the city's overall "Entrepreneur of the Year." His LinkedIn profile is here.

Previous VNC emids coverage is here.

. last edited 15 August 2017 5:10pm CDST