New Delhi, May 7: The CK Birla group has bought the 50 per cent stake of its US partner in the IT solutions joint venture, Birla Horizons International. The seven-year-old company, now renamed Birlasoft, has chalked out plans for increasing its turnover from the current $33 million to $200 million in the next five years, according to its newly-appointed chief executive officer Anal Jain. In addition, Birlasoft will pursue higher growth through acquisitions in the next one year.The company had increased its turnover from Rs 90 crore in 1997-98 to Rs 137 crore in the last fiscal and aims to continue with the 70 per cent compound annual growth rate. Its revenue comprises about 4.5 per cent of the CK Birla group's total turnover of Rs 3,200 crore, said Jain.
It plans to make an investment of Rs 12 crore this fiscal year towards expansion. The company will open more offices in the east and west coast of the US. It will also target new markets such as Europe, West Asia and the Asia-Pacific.
The companyalready has subsidiaries in the UK and US, with offices in New Jersey and California. It will open new offices in Bangalore and Mumbai and increase staff strength to 800 from the present 500. The Delhi-headquartered company has 160 workstations at its software development facility in Noida near Delhi. Jain indicated that the Noida capacity could be increased, and another offshore software development centre could be started in Bangalore within a year.
Jain said the company has also identified areas like e-commerce and Internet. "We shall get the company listed very soon," Jain said, without divulging the exact date of the move.
"We will focus on new Internet-centric and web-enablement technologies and datawarehousing, but client-server solutions still comprise about 75 per cent of our revenue and we aim to continue with these," Jain said. "The new name and identity is indicative of the ambitious plans we have for Birlasoft and our aim is to make it a truly global organisation spearheading the thrust on ITfor the group," said NR Kulkarni, group financial advisor.
The company has strengthened its management team in India and abroad by appointing a new head for its UK operations and a vice-president, solutions, for the US. Birlasoft has also revamped its HR policies, and is improving facilities at the India development centre, besides launching a help desk for all employees. An ISO 9001 (BVQI) company, Birlasoft has initiated steps for obtaining SEI CMM certification.
The company's blue chip clientele includes Citicorp, Bell South Telecom, Deloitte & Touche, AT&T and Merrill Lynch in the US, ICL and Trustees Savings Bank in the UK, ISIT in the Netherlands, BHEL and National Engineering Industries in India.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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