Baan to source large chunk of software from India facility

Prachi Verma

New Delhi, Jan 6: Recessionary times are drawing companies to India for its low-cost advantage. ERP major Baan Company too is leaning more heavily on its development centre here to leverage that edge.

Over the next two years, Baan intends to increase its global development work out of its Hyderabad facility from the present 30 per cent to 50 per cent.

“Low development costs and a vast pool of skilled manpower are the major factors to increase our development work in India, over the next 24 months,” Baan India director (sales and marketing) Alok Tandon said.

Globally, besides its Indian development centre in Hyderabad, Baan has two more such facilities, each in the US and Holland.

Baan India is also planning to add another 150 software professionals in the next 2 years and with this its team will increase from 750 to 900.

“We will annually increase our team by about 20 per cent from the present 750, owing to the expansion of our development work in India,” he said.

Till date, about $10 to 12 million has already been infused in setting up its Hyderabad development center.

Further, the company plans to continue investing agressively in its Indian operations, though it has not decided on the amount to be invested in future.

At present, Baan has 130 customers, of which 30 per cent are from the process industry (chemicals, pharma), 25 per cent from automotive, 20 per cent are one time projects and 15 per cent from electronics.

“We see the process industry vertical significantly expanding in terms of its contribution to the company’s revenue from 30 per cent to 40 per cent in one or two years,” Mr Tandon said.

The global strategy of the company is to make India its hub for e-applications. Working towards this, Baan plans to develop new e-applications like e-sales, e-collaboration and e-procurement out of its Hyderabad development facility.

Wholly-owned by Invensys, the $14 billion Baan company is headquartered at Holland. Baan India markets and supports Baan enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, supply chain management and e-commerce applications for manufacturing and logictics industries in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.