"We are looking at enhanced e-commerce earnings, recieving CMM 5 certification and a stable market conditions as a precursor to NASDAQ listing. The listing is expected to be completed by the later part of next year. This is because HIL is looking at getting a substantial premium from its equity offer," HIL chairman, Atul Nishar told The Financial Express, while refusing to divulge any financial details regarding the offer.

Hexaware Infosystems Ltd is a privately held company promoted by the Nishar family of the Aptech Ltd fame and has a paid up equity capital of Rs 9 crore. Hexaware is following the footsteps of its more illustrious cousins, Infosys Technologies Ltd and Satyam Infoway Ltd, and is likely to be the third Indian company to get Nasdaq listing. However, the race for Nasdaq listing is hotting up with other domestc IT players like NIIT, Wipro, Pentafour, Silverline Industries etc. expected to join the fray.

"The Nasdaq listing is a natural extension to our presence in north America and the recently acquired CMM level 4 status. It will also give Hexaware the opportunity to capitalise on its existing business and operating model and accelerate the future growth. Apart from significantly enhancing our financial resources and making local talent available to us, this will also give us significant marketing and positioning advantages," the president of Hexaware Technologies Inc., Avi Lele, told The Financial Express.

The New Jersey, USA, based Hexaware Technologies Inc. (HTI) is a 100 per cent subsidiary of HIL. "HIL is currently beefing up its operations and the quality, efficiency and diversity of its products since it plans to apply for the CMM level 5 certification in June 2000, the toughest quality certification for IT companies worldwide," Atul Nishar said.

The company expects to position itself as a north-American multinational corporation and has been recently recognised by Deliotte and Touche as one of the five fastest growing IT companies in the USA. HIL has also reduced its focus on providing Y2K solutions, reengineering applications and application management. "We are now positioning ourselves as an e-commerce technology player and will be increasingly focusing on providing e-commerce and enterprise management services in order to give our clients the maximum returns on their IT investments. The bulk of our future business is expected to come from web-enabled business," Lele said.