"We expect to close the second year with $48 million and the third year with $89 million in revenues," said Arjun Malhotra, chairman and CEO, TechSpan. "Once we touch the $100 million mark, we'll be in a different club."

Malhotra, former vice-chairman and founder of the HCL group, said that TechSpan's revenues came out of the US.

Malhotra said that for the $13-million revenue target, Techspan's run rate in the month of December '99 would be $2.5 million while for the $48 million target, the run rate in December 2000 would be $5.5 million. "So, I've to do $3 million in 12 months. Which means: My increment is $250,000. I'm already running ahead of $250,000 a month increment right now," he added.

Malhotra said that as TechSpan's increment increased,there would be a rollaround of project, people and revenues, which, if managed efficiently, would secure the revenue target rather comfortably.

With targets in place, TechSpan is now looking for ways to communicate its ideas and business plans. "We've not been good at positioning ourselves," admitted Malhotra. To that effect it is working on a novel website, which would be ready by December '99 -- when Malhotra plans his next visit to India.

Bullish on the emergence of e-business possibilities, Malhotra said, "the change into this new area has allowed us to get into a market point where we can become one of the leaders."

TechSpan undertakes product development as well as customisation for implementation. Its business processes handle small-sized jobs with quicker turnaround of three months or less.

Though TechSpan plans to remain focused on the US market, it is exploring opportunities in the UK and South Africa. "We are also looking actively at the Chinese market because we are doing a lot of work forChinese internet companies," said Malhotra.

Driving the company's business model of distributed consultancy is the centre of excellence (CoE). Recently, it added a 20,000 sq.ft., $2-million CoE at Noida near Delhi to its existing COEs at Fairfax, Virginia and Sunnyvale, California in the US. Now it is contemplating to open CoEs in Ireland, Australia, the Phillipines and Singapore.

India will be used as a centre for recruitment, training and retraining for its employees worldwide. Recently TechSpan recruited 75 consultants in India, in addition to its global employee strength of 175. It plans to have over 800 software consulting professionals worldwide by 2001.

TechSpan Inc, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California in the US, is a software consulting organisation providing a range of high-value software services to Fortune 1000 companies and governments worldwide.