"Apart from converting its branch office in Japan into a wholly-owned subsidiary, Mastek will set up subsidiaries in Belgium and Switzerland to consolidate its operations in Europe," Desai said here on Sunday.

During 1998-99, the company had formed a subsidiary in Germany and set up an office in Japan as part of global expansion plans, he said.

As part of expanding its software development capacity, the company took additional space at the Seepz, export processing zone in north-west Mumbai and added 500 more software engineers during 1999-2000 accounting year, beginning June 1999, he said. However, the company would not tap the market for the purpose, he said, adding it would meet the total cost of expansion plans with its internal resources.

The company would also seek dematerialisation of its shares,even though there was no such compulsion from the regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), to do so, Desai said. Mastek, which has its own product portfolio and involved in selling third party software, would also address emerging markets for e-commerce and customer relations management (CRM) software in future, he said. Mastek's own software products include Goldmine, a depot sales system; Elixir, a package for life insurance companies; Laps 2000, an automated loan processing package and Jaal, a tool for building interactive Internet applications, besides providing services on a host of other applications.

In line with the corporate governance code released by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the company would go in for consolidated accounts of group companies and appoint independent specialists on its board, Desai said."Mastek's turnover for the year ending June 30 1999 is expected to grow by 60 per cent to Rs 160 crore, and it is likely to maintain its streak of 65 per cent growthin profitability, as witnessed in the first three quarters, during the fourth quarter," he said. Mastek posted Rs 3.78 crore profit for the first nine months period of 1998-99 against Rs 3.13 crore for the year 1997-98, he added.

The company would report 90 per cent growth in exports crossing Rs 150-crore mark during the year, he said, adding export focus of the company, particularly to the United States and United Kingdom, has helped achieve this. The US And UK operations were expected to contribute 45 per cent and 40 per cent respectively to the turnover of the company during 1998-99, as against 44 per cent and 38 per cent respectively during the previous year, Desai said.