ER&D vendors continue to be very active in M&As, with many tuck-in acquisitions. AFRY is now in full acquisition mode with six transactions in 2021 YTD. Competitor Sweco has also accelerated with four transactions. Accenture has made an unusual transaction by taking over a manufacturer of industrial automation and robots in Brazil for Accenture Industry X. Finally, Cognizant acquired a significant German automotive ER&D vendor, ESG.
In the past three years, Cognizant has been building Softvision as a new EPAM. Like EPAM, Softvision has grown very fast: Softvision 10-12k employees currently, from 2.8k employees at the time of its acquisition in late 2018.
Cognizant has been making more headlines in ER&D services, recently. Last month, we had mentioned its
ERDservices.org rarely reports about Cognizant, the NJ-headquartered but India-centric IT services giant in the space of ER&D services. Despite its size (2018 revenues of USD 16.1bn) and high-growth, Cognizant is little-visible in the ER&D area and is not a significant player in this industry.