To strengthen its foothold in these countries, Polaris is open to entering into joint ventures with local partners, said company officials.

In a bid to be a global software player in the outsourcing business, the Rs 61-crore company will be tapping only those Fortune 500 companies which give sustained business of over $1 million annually, said Polaris Software Lab chairman and managing director Arun Jain.

To provide cost-competitive solutions, the company is setting up offshore development centres at Chennai, Noida and another location in South India. Polaris has international presence in over 10 countries. To fund its expansion plans, Polaris plans to hit the capital market later this month with an initial public offer.

Speaking to The Financial Express, Jainoutlined the company's future plans. Excerpts:
Most India software companies who are active in the global arena seem to rely heavily on business from the US. Will Polaris take a similar route in its quest to be a global software major?

That has never been the case with Polaris. We took a conscious decision not to rely to much on the US. Only 58 per cent of our revenue comes from there, as against industry average of around 80 per cent.

We will concentrate on the European and Japanese markets in the next few years in a big way. A Polaris subsidiary should be up and running in Germany by the end of the year. We will have an office in Japan in the first quarter of 2000.

The German subsidiary will take care of European business interests. We are looking for alliance with local players in the European and Japanese markets.

Do you plan to tap Euro conversion business in Europe?

I have apprehensions about the business potential that Euro conversion business offers to the industry. Unlikethe Y2K business, which was manual-oriented, the Euro business is knowlege-intensive. Most companies will not feel comfortable outsourcing their financial and accounting activities, but may prefer to do the conversion jobs themselves with some outside support.

Though we have done some Euro conversion work as part of some projects, Euro conversion per se will not be our call. In Europe, Polaris will focus on software product companies and help them migrate their products to component-based technologies.

To overcome the language barrier in Japan, we are starting language training programmes for our employees very soon.

Can you explain the two-pronged strategy of having several offshore development centres in the country and at the same time setting up global development centres in other countries?

The global development centres will help us position ourselves as a foreign company in the respective markets. For instance, in the US, we will offer our services at rates what any other US companyoffers. However, we will leverage our India advantage through the offshore development centres.

The idea is to move up the value chain and go for high-value projects.

How is Polaris keeping up with development work going on in the new technology areas?

We spend around 10 per cent of our resources on new and cutting-edge technologies every year. The areas we are working on include making mainframe applications web-enabled, developing voice-recognition software applications, convergence technologies involving telecom software and component-based technologies.