OISL is also eyeing the offshore markets two years down the line. OISL is working on building domain knowledge in Extended Enterprise Applications on horizontal industry segments such as consumer products, manufacturing, service sectors, process industry with special focus on automobile, chemical, health care, media, insurance, banking and telecommunications.

According to OISL chief operating officer Naresh Kripalani: "Since all the above areas will be Internet enabled, OISL will also focus on strategic e-business consulting and implementation/integration of e-business solutions. It will further concentrate on Internet enabling enterprise applications, together with focussing on business-to-business (B2B) applications like vortals and trading networks." Adds Mr Kripalani, "The company is expected to generate revenues to the tune of Rs 5-7 crore in the first year of operations." Major competitors in this area include multinational consultancies such as Arthur Anderson, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), SEIL and McKinsey.

Mirc Electronics had also commissioned an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) project in July 1999, which went live in February 2000. Says Mr Kripalani: "We intend to be the application providers in the area of ERP, supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM) among other products."

ERP not only provides the backbone for an integrated database relevant to the company it is implemented in, but also provides the company with the best integrated business practices within its industry, says Mr Kripalani. He adds: "Once a company has built the backbone, it is now in a position to deal outside the company."