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InfoUSA goes global in plans for expansion
(Omaha World-Herald (NE) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Apr. 11--InfoUSA's next big push to sign up customers for its sales leads and marketing research will be overseas.
The Omaha company plans to expand quickly into India and China, writing profiles on large businesses there and selling them to other businesses. The next Asia-Pacific moves would be thrusts into Australia and New Zealand.
It is already building both large-business and small-business databases in the United Kingdom. Beyond that, Chief Executive Officer Vin Gupta, also the company founder and board chairman, is eyeing Ireland.
"And then, of course, look at larger economies like Germany, France and Italy," he said. He expects to be established in Western Europe in 2010.
The InfoUSA corporate name may be changed to reflect the shift.
InfoGlobal, perhaps? "Info something," Gupta said. A decision on that will be made in the next couple of months, he said.
InfoUSA is putting out no financial projections on what overseas expansion will mean for revenue and profits. "I don't know that we have a target in mind," Chief Financial Officer Stormy Dean said.
Sales outside the United States and Canada now account for less than 10 percent of overall revenue, Dean said, and Asia-Pacific is "not even one percent" of the current run rate of $750 million a year.
What it means for growth in the Omaha-area operations of InfoUSA is uncertain. Dean said a few jobs could be added in the short term, but he was not sure of long-term potential. The company employs 1,600 at its Omaha headquarters and at buildings in Papillion and Carter Lake.
InfoUSA's OneSource Information Services division, which compiles information on big companies worldwide and sells it for business-to-business sales leads, has operated in Singapore since 2002 and has sales teams in China and India.
Rather than building its own operations in China and India, OneSource is negotiating partnerships with companies there. "If we had to go on our own into these countries, there would be big startup costs," Gupta said. "You mitigate your risk, you reduce your investment."
But, he added, "we might also make a small equity investment."
The partners will use OneSource's processes, software and technology, Gupta said, "so they can get up to speed quickly." He expects to have the partnerships operating within a year.
"We've got a toehold there," Dean said, "and the market is enormous if you can crack it."
Although he said he wasn't thinking of international expansion at the time he made the acquisitions, companies he bought in the last four years are important to how Gupta is going about the global play.
InfoUSA bought OneSource, based in Concord, Mass., in 2004 for $103 million and Opinion Research Corp. in late 2006 for $134 million. Within a year of buying the Princeton, N.J., polling firm, InfoUSA bought NWC Research, an Australian firm, and two U.S. research companies and bundled them together in a Market Research Group.
Expansion of OneSource, which has offices in London and Singapore, will be coupled both in Britain and the Far East with Opinion Research's efforts.
ORC International, an Opinion Research unit, is doing the hiring and building the infrastructure for InfoUK, which is building a small-business database in Birmingham, England. When selling begins, InfoUK will have profiles on 2.5 million businesses it can peddle to resellers such as list brokers as well as directly to businesses that use them.
While the British operation covers both big and small businesses, the general approach is that research on big companies for the business-to-business market will be the first wave of InfoUSA's global rollout. Small-business research and sales leads will follow.
"What we do at InfoUSA (small business profiles in this country), we'll duplicate in the UK, India and China," Gupta said.
Gupta described the difference this way: "OneSource would have 200 names in its database for Omaha. InfoUSA would have all 20,000 names of Omaha businesses."
Consumer sales leads could make a third wave. But privacy laws in many countries restrict selling data on people, Gupta said. InfoUSA sells leads on consumers in the United States and Canada and might do so internationally on a country-by-country basis, he said.
In addition to acting as a "hedge" for economic changes in various parts of the world, the overseas moves are intended to augment direct marketing to Americans, make more of the business-to-business market and give customers more than lists of names and addresses.
"It's not a substitute for what we're doing," Dean said. "It's an add-on."
The Opinion Research acquisition was key to the shift, Gupta said. "It gives us a very stable business and a highly technological business," he said. "You always need market research. It does not have ups and downs."
While he is expanding now in India and China through partnerships, acquisitions are not out of mind for Gupta, who has pulled off dozens of them in the past decade. Some companies were bought after the collapse of the tech boom for pennies on the dollar of what they were once worth.
"We are looking at more acquisitions in foreign countries," he said. He's looking in Asia because of the area's growing economies and because companies there can be bought "at reasonable prices."
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