Mitesh Patel started Fifosys in 2001 without realizing he was a managed service provider. Twenty-four years later, through smart investments and acquisitions, he has built Fifosys into one of the leading MSPs in the UK.

At No. 23, Fifosys was the highest-ranking UK representative on the 2025 MSP 501 list – up from No. 103 in 2024. A big part of the growth came from the May 2024 acquisition of TMB (Technology Means Business) – it’s third acquisition in five years – although Fifosys also grew organically in the past year.

Patel started Fifosys after digital cameras wiped out his family’s film processing business. “I had no huge level of passion for technology, but I thought that’s the future,” the Fifosys CEO said. “I had the view that what happened to my family wouldn’t happen to my clients.”

So he’s dedicated to staying ahead of technology trends, getting into managed services and cloud before anyone knew what they were.

“Early on, I didn’t know we were an MSP, the term hadn’t been used yet,” he said. “Neither had the term ‘cloud.’ For me, it was all about, can I help someone be in a better position tomorrow than they are today? When people said, ‘what do you do?’ we’d say ‘we show people how to use technology to make money or save money.’”

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As for his money-making strategy, “it was just about building recurring revenue so I could pay the bills. My first year, our annual recurring revenue was 300 pounds [$412]. So we knocked on doors and grew our clients. As our clients grew, we grew.”

Fifosys now has about 300 customers and 22 recurring revenue services and products, including a significant Office 365 business.

“A client of ours is somebody we can help grow and they’re under our protection – growth and protection are the two key things for us,” Patel said. “We sell a lot of cloud services and our cybersecurity stack is very mature.”

Customer Growth, Diversification

While part of a Business Growth Program at Cranfield University in 2010, Patel realized it was dangerous having one client represent 83% of his revenue. So he acquired Octavia IT to create one of the largest IT outsourcing businesses serving the SME market in London. “That doubled our size, and I knocked that large client down from 83% to 22%,” he said.

By then, Fifosys had already launched a cloud platform following a seven-figure investment in data center equipment.

“We recognized that adopting the latest technology has the potential to help businesses to succeed and achieve strategic objectives,” he said. “So, in 2007, we opened our first-generation cloud platform and this occurred prior to the cloud becoming recognized as a mainstream concept."

MSP Acquisitions Require Integration

Buying Foration IT in 2019 gave Fifosys broader access to the London Market and the 2021 acquisition of Birmingham, UK-based Enforce Technology expanded its business outside of London. TMB expanded Fifosys across southeast England.

TMB was Fifosys’ largest acquisition and Patel said it probably won’t be its last, although integration was a large undertaking. “It’s been a real challenge,” he said. “We inherited two new locations and increased staff 40%. We replaced our entire toolset. I replaced ConnectWise after 17 years with Autotask, replaced N-Able after 14 years with Datto RMM. We launched VulScan as our vulnerability solution. We’ve done so much in the last 15 months, so we don’t want to try and do too much more. But I get emails every single day asking, ‘Would you like to buy my MSP business?’