But new business orders, particularly in the e-business software and embedded systems segments, will ensure higher growth during the remaining two quarters to post 21 to 22 per cent profit growth for the full year, Mohan said.

"This year our e-commerce and e-business software revenues should be between one-sixth and one-fifth of total revenues and these are the new growth areas." "So if we continue to do business at the level we are progressing or a little better, we should be able to grow between 20 and 25 per cent," Mohan said. BFL is 52 per cent owned by Baring India Investment Ltd, a private equity fund sponsored by ING Group of the Netherlands. During the first half of 1999-2000, BFL posted a significantly lower profit of Rs 6.04 crore ($1.4 million).But the firm had then said it would still manage to post 40 per cent profit growth for the full year riding on the new business orders it had signed on.

"One reason (for slower growth) is that last year's growth happened very fast at a 100 per cent level and to continue at that level was proving to be more difficult," Mohan said. "Secondly I think our (manpower) utilisation in the initial part of the year was not as high as it should have been."

Mohan said 24 per cent of BFL's revenues in 1998-99 was contributed by fixing the Y2K problem in computers and the company at the start of 1999-2000 realigned its work completely to new business areas such as e-business and embedded systems. "The realignment takes time and during this period our (manpower) utilisation was lower," he said. "That is why our margins are lower and so also our growth."

About 20 per cent of BFL's software professionals are at present involved in implementing projects directly related to e-commerce and e-business.