Ann Arbor-based data integration firm GDI Infotech Inc. expects to hire at least 30 to 50 employees this year after establishing a government solutions division and acquiring an Ann Arbor professional services firm.

GDI has acquired Ann Arbor-based Soft-Link International Inc., which provides talent acquisition services to multiple industries, including life sciences and information technology. The companies aren’t releasing details about the transaction.

GDI has absorbed the firm’s five local employees and another 30 scattered throughout the country, GDI CEO Bhushan Kulkarni said. GDI employs about 30 in Ann Arbor and another 120 scattered throughout the country.

Meanwhile, Kulkarni said his “conservative" expectation is that the company would hire 30 to 50 workers this year to staff its new government solutions division. Most of those employees will be based at the company’s headquarters on Varsity Drive, Kulkarni said. 

The move comes nearly a year after GDI secured tax incentives from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. to invest $1.9 million in an expansion of its Ann Arbor presence. The company announced that it would hire 121 workers by 2013. Kulkarni said GDI would soon begin construction on its expanded facility on Varsity Drive.

The company has hired former Washtenaw County deputy administrator David Behen to lead the growth in its government solutions business. Behen spent 10 years in Washtenaw County government, including time as the information technology director. He will serve as GDI's government solutions practice leader and vice president.

“We had been doing public-sector (work) in bits and pieces, but with his addition to the team, we’re looking at going deeper into that sector and expanding that sector quite a bit,” Kulkarni said.

GDI is an information technology consulting firm that helps clients eliminate inefficiencies in software and data technologies. It helps companies streamline duplicate software applications when mergers create data overlap, for example.

The firm believes that governmental software inefficiencies and a broad desire to cut costs wherever possible form an opportunity for GDI’s services in the public sector.

“It’s something that governments nationwide are going to be able to take advantage of,” Behen said.

The acquisition of Soft-Link, meanwhile, comes nine years after Madhuri Deshpande left GDI to start Soft-Link.

Deshpande said Soft-Link’s strength in the pharmaceutical sector would fit comfortably with GDI’s growing hold on health care business. She has joined GDI as the company’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.

The acquisition “just gives us more strength to go after health care, pharmaceutical and government sectors,” she said.

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