Mumbai : Given the slowdown in IT spending by US corporates and the need to start exploring European markets, software services company Mastek appears to have taken a strategic view to keep the company on the growth path. The IT applications outsourcing company has identified six key strategies for their future growth. Mr Ashank Desai, chairman and managing director Mastek says, "the first three strategies are the shorter term growth areas and are being acted on. The other three are the medium term growth areas, results of which will be visible in the the next 1-3 years." The first strategy focuses on large offshore software development with the Fortune 1000 accounts. Mastek has been gearing up its market efforts to service this segment. They already have three offices in the US and are currently recruiting sales people for this purpose. Since this also calls for strengthening their efforts in Mumbai, Mastek which is already a SEI-CMM Level 5 and P-CMM Level 3 company is creating a stronger base in Mumbai to cater to the off-shore development clients. They already have the infrastructure in place at Vashi. The second strategy focuses on tommorow's technology or applications. Here they are focused on the front-end solutions which is CRM and eCRM and e-business. They are also working on CTI, WAP and embedded systems in the telecommunications arena. Their third strategy concentrates on markets outside of the US. More than 40 per cent of Mastek's revenues are from markets other than the US. They have a presence in UK, Japan, Germany, which helps them tap new markets. Their fourth strategy is on acquisition of companies in the US and Europe. Mastek is looking at companies withwhom synergies can be formed. Mastek will be looking into companies with domain expertise in the financial and telecommunications sectors.
The company has formed an internal cell that will evaluate the acquisitions. Mr Desai says, "as part of this, currency becomes important and hence we are looking at listing our company overseas at the right time. When and where is still not decided." The fifth strategy looks into alliances and joint ventures. One initiative under this is their alliance with Microsoft for .net. Mastek had set up an eLab recently and has so far invested $ 1 million. The investment is deployed on technology, products and in people and training them. This division will identify future technology areas, such as m-commerce. Mastek which is already focused on the insurance and financial sectors in Asia-Pacific, will leverage on them to build domain expertise globally. This is their sixth strategy. The eLab is currently working on an application for `Palm' for the insurance sector. The insurance agent would load onto his Palm all his customer data which he synchronises with the insurance branch. Every time an insurance company comesout with the new product or modifies the existing one, all the agent will have to do is either physically synchronise it using the infra red port or dial up on the modem and sync it over the network.
..Web-based billing application in the works under .net
Under .net the company is developing a Web-based project that is a billing application that will cater to the ASPs/ISPs. The prototype of this product is complete. After the service provider registers, he defines his services/products, pricing/charges structures and then passes on the customer data, which is of two types. One is the kind of customers and the services they subscribes to and the other is usage details. The billing generation after the formalities are completed is conducted by the product. They will also have interfaces to send the data back to the ASP/ISP. It also includes mobile interfaces. In this the end user of the ASP/ISP will be able to view his outstanding bills, bill due dates and transaction details on the mobile devices.
Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
