Insights (General IT Services)
Growth and Consolidation: Where Does Your Business Rank in APAC IT Services M&A?
Category sets your ceiling. Preparation decides whether you get anywhere near it.
Over the past year we've published deep dives into Salesforce, Google Cloud, ServiceNow, Data & AI, Cloud & Digital Transformation, Microsoft, Cybersecurity, and Oracle M&A. Each one asked a version of the same question: what's a business like this worth right now? This latest whitepaper steps back from any single platform and looks at APAC IT services as a whole, and it answers the question a lot of founders actually want answered first: not "what's my platform worth" but "where do I personally rank."
The multiple depends heavily on category
Line up everything we've covered this year and a clear hierarchy emerges in EV/Gross Revenue terms:
- Data, Analytics & AI Services: average ~3.2x
- Oracle partners: average ~3.2x
- ServiceNow consultancies: average ~2.8x
- Cybersecurity firms: average ~2.6x (with the single highest individual multiple we've seen, 5.7x)
- Google Cloud partners: average ~2.3x
- General APAC IT Services: average ~1.65x
- Salesforce and Microsoft ecosystem consultancies: average ~1.2x to 1.5x
(Cloud & Digital Transformation doesn't get its own line here: its own multiples data draws on the same Salesforce and Microsoft datasets above, rather than a distinct number of its own, which is itself a small data point worth noting. A lot of what gets sold as "cloud transformation" work is really Salesforce or Microsoft delivery wearing a broader label.)
The logic holds across every category: the scarcer and more specialised the capability, the richer the multiple. A production-grade AI delivery team is harder to replace than a general Azure migration practice, and buyers price that difference in directly.
There's a genuinely interesting wrinkle at the top of that list. Data & AI Services and Oracle tie for the richest average multiple in the whole series, and they could not be more different markets. One is the hottest, most talked-about category in enterprise technology right now. The other is, by our own description, the quietest: a shrinking pool of deals (down from 42 in 2021 to just 18 in 2025) concentrated in founder-led firms nobody outside the ecosystem has heard of. Both get priced the same way, because both come down to the same thing: how few credible, scaled alternatives a buyer actually has to choose from. Hype is one route to scarcity. Being unfashionable and hard to replace is another.
But category only explains part of the story
Here's the more interesting finding in this particular whitepaper. Within "general APAC IT services" alone, a single category with a 1.65x average, actual deals ranged from 0.3x all the way to 2.6x. That's close to a ninefold spread inside one category. Telstra's acquisition of Versent, a Melbourne-based cloud and AWS consultancy, closed at the strong end of that range, reflecting a business with over 500 staff, a diversified enterprise client base spanning more than 40% of the ASX 100, and a demonstrated multi-year growth rate. Other transactions in the same dataset, doing broadly similar work, closed at a fraction of that multiple.
That spread is the real lesson. Two businesses can sit in the exact same category, serve the same kind of client, and land on opposite ends of the valuation range. The difference isn't the platform. It's how ready the business was when a buyer looked at it.
What actually moves you from the bottom of the range to the top
This whitepaper's version of our READY framework gets unusually specific about what "ready" means in practice, and each point maps directly to a reason buyers pay more or less:
Resilient financials. Clean, accrual-based accounts with monthly closes and real visibility into gross, net and EBITDA margins. A buyer who has to reconstruct your numbers before they can trust them will price in that risk.
Enterprise clients and revenue quality. Client concentration below roughly 30% from any single account, plus evidence of client longevity and expansion. A business with one client at 60% of revenue is a different (and cheaper) proposition than one with a diversified book.
Aligned team structure. A clear line between founder and leadership roles, and a sensible mix of permanent versus contract staff. Buyers are wary of businesses that can't run a day without the founder in the room.
Differentiation in market. Documented IP, delivery playbooks or accelerators, not just tribal knowledge. This is often the single biggest gap between a 0.3x outcome and a 2x-plus one: two firms with similar revenue, but one has codified how it delivers and the other hasn't.
You, the founder, being ready. Personal clarity on why you're selling, what role (if any) you want post-deal, and where your shareholders actually agree or disagree. Deals stall or unwind more often over misaligned expectations than over price.
None of this is platform-specific. It applies whether you're a Salesforce shop, a ServiceNow specialist, or a general cloud consultancy, which is exactly why it's worth treating as its own piece of work, separate from whichever ecosystem you happen to sit in.
The buyer pool is broader than category suggests, too
The deals behind this whitepaper span SAP, Salesforce, cybersecurity, ServiceNow, Microsoft, Oracle and MarTech consultancies, acquired by everyone from global systems integrators to telcos to PE-backed platforms. As we've noted elsewhere in this series, the majority of recent APAC deals have been done by newer corporate acquirers rather than the traditional top five. Combined with the point above, that means the businesses getting the best outcomes aren't necessarily the ones in the "hottest" category. They're the ones that were genuinely ready when the right buyer, whoever that turned out to be, came looking.
What this means for founders
Know your category's ceiling, but don't assume it's your floor. Understanding where your platform or specialism sits in the broader multiple hierarchy is useful context. It's not a guarantee of where you'll land.
The gap between the bottom and top of your range is closeable. Client concentration, documented IP, clean financials and founder clarity are all things you can address well before a process starts, and they matter more than which platform you specialise in.
Start the READY work early. Most of what separates a premium outcome from an average one takes twelve to twenty-four months to build credibly. If a sale is even a possibility in the next two years, the right time to start is now.
If you want an honest view of where your business currently sits, and what would move the needle most before you go to market, we're happy to talk it through. Our full breakdown of APAC IT Services M&A, including the complete READY framework and underlying deal data, is available in the whitepaper below.
