Tarantula

Background

Founded in 2000 by Ravi Kuppan, Tarantula Global Holdings Pte. Ltd. is a global provider of tower management software to towercos and telcos. In its early stages, Ravi developed a Site Sharing portal for operators to share site details in order to promote co-location and site management. After a few years of early growth with the Site Share product and related professional services, Vaibhav Kulkarni joined Tarantula’s leadership team as CTO.

In 2005, Vaibhav and Ravi identified a growth potential opportunity in the towerco market, recognizing that there was no software available to manage tower assets. Eager to pursue this opportunity, Ravi created custom tower management solutions in 2007 to serve 3 major tower operators in India.

Between 2008 and 2012 the company continued to serve the Indian market and to make further inroads in Europe. In 2014, Udhay Mathialagan joined Tarantula’s leadership as CEO to assist in the commercialization and geographic expansion of the business. Over the following three years, the customer footprint in South East Asia, Europe and Africa was expanded to increase from 10 countries to 20 countries.

Today, Tarantula is the leading telecom site asset management solution in the global market due to its unique purpose-built colocation management capabilities. The business maintains a particularly high market share in India and South East Asia, and as such, they operate both of their primary offices out of these locations.

The Decision to Sell

In 2016, Udhay embarked on a sale process with a vision to grow the business further. Due to the nature of the telecom tower market, Udhay knew an acquirer of mid-market software businesses would be the best solution for Tarantula.

When approached by Volaris group about a potential acquisition, the leadership team was intrigued by the opportunity and started exploring synergies with the existing portfolio of communications businesses. With the backing of their publicly traded parent company, Constellation Software Inc., Volaris would be able to

provide Tarantula with the capital and best practices needed to scale globally. Udhay also saw value in the certainty and timeliness of execution by Volaris Group, an acquirer having completed 50+ past transactions at the time.

We are eager to grow our business further in our core markets and to expand our presence in other high growth wireless infrastructure markets, internationally, as Telcos continue to spin-off their tower portfolios and new Towercos continue to be formed. We are excited about Volaris’ long-term commitment to our market and the best practices and synergies that exist within their emerging Communications vertical.

— Udhay Mathialagan, CEO, Tarantula

Post-Acquisition Success

Following the integration, Tarantula has comfortably settled into life under Volaris Group and the business continues to run as usual. Vaibhav, Ravi, and Udhay all remain leading the business forward, working closely with the leadership team at Volaris to achieve the global growth they envision for Tarantula. Over the next months, they will be tapping into new geographies and expanding further in the South East Asian Market.