Armonk-headquartered tech giant IBM said that it was selling off select software businesses to Noida-headquartered IT services firm HCL Technologies for $1.8 billion (around Rs 12,800 crore). HCL Technologies said in a statement that the transaction is expected to close by mid-2019. C. Vijayakumar, President and CEO, HCL Technologies, said: “We continue to see great opportunities in the market to enhance our Mode-3 (Products and Platforms) offerings. The products that we are acquiring are in large growing market areas like security, marketing and commerce which are strategic segments for HCL. Many of these products are well regarded by clients and positioned in the top quadrant by industry analysts.” He further added that these products will be combined with the company's Mode-1 and Mode-2 services and their large-scale deployments will serve global enterprises across a wide range of industries and markets.