CITIL is also expanding its international presence by setting up offices and support centres all over Europe and the US within the next one year.CITIL chief executive officer R Ravisankar told The Financial Express that the company is close to buying equity stake in a US software company. It has already conducted a technical evaluation and is negotiating the price.The company is also in the process of setting up several centres of excellence for data warehousing and internet banking in tie-ups with other companies, said Ravisankar.

With these strategic shifts, the $35-million company hopes to increase its compound annual growth rate from the present 70 per cent to achieve a $100 million turnover in the next two years and $250 million in four years. The company hopes toclose the fiscal with a Rs 140-crore turnover.

CITIL made a strong entry into western European market last year by setting up a large support and marketing office in Luxembourg. "We want to launch our products in France, UK, Germany and Netherlands to push up the value of our unit sales," said Ravisankar.

The company is also shifting away from direct sales to reselling through channel partners. It has appointed distributors in 12 countries in the last year alone. Besides tying up with software solutions majors like Microsoft and Oracle, CITIL is talking to hardware vendors like NCR and Sun. "We are also talking to some big consulting firms and system integration companies where they can front-end us. CITIL will supply the products and they will do the sales, support and implementation," according to Ravisankar.

Because of its aggressive growth plan, CITIL is also looking at acquisition opportunities in India, as well as entering new related businesses in the coming fiscal.

``Domestically, our wholemotivation for acquisition will be top-line growth and shoring up our resources for our services business much more rapidly. The volume of business we are generating in terms of market opportunities in services is far greater than our capacity to recruit enough people,'' pointed out Ravisankar.

Having an acquisition fund of several crores, acquiring a few small domestic companies and outsourcing its excess business is high on CITIL's agenda this fiscal. In 1998, it had made Rs 2 crore investment in Delhi-based ERP solutions provider Eastern Software Services (ESS). Together with CitiCorp Venture Capital, it holds a 40 per cent stake in the company.

``Without external borrowings, we can invest tens of crores. CITIL has the funds and zero leverage on debts. Our capacity to generate funding is enormous and the capital base very small at Rs 4 crore. The idea is not to try to own a company, but to take a stake in companies which have complementary products and add value to our product range,'' according toRavisankar.

Though CITIL is 49 per cent owned by CitiCorp Venture Capital, 90 per cent of its revenue accrues from 200 banks across 60 countries in the US, Europe, Africa, West Asia and South-East Asia. For Citibank, it is doing work in data warehousing, internet banking and e-commerce. Close to 70 per cent of its revenue comes from products that cover retail banking, corporate banking and investment banking. Its entire product development is done in the four development centres in Mumbai and Bangalore.