The Andante group of companies was founded in Sweden, in 1989, by Lars Bjern, Jerker Carlsson and Kim Forss. A few years later new companies in India and the Philippines were established. These were initiated by Suresh Pingale and Benjamin Milano, and minority shares of the equity capital were invested by the Swedish company. The companies in the group are active in development cooperation; for example with business development, environmental management and public sector management. In 1994, the founding company was split in three independent companies; one specialised in evaluation, one in development research and one in commercial development. The purpose of the split was to focus and streamline activities and to ascertain full independence for the resarch and evaluation activities.