Chennai-based functional testing company Maveric Systems, which is raising the stakes on it mobile payment gateway council project in association with IIT Madras Research Park, is betting big on R&D on software testing. According to Maveric, the fallout of the research would fuel universal mobile banking penetration in the country. The company foresees a huge potential in testing business, especially in BFSI segment. As the global testing market is expected to jump to $53 billion by 2013, there is a variety of growth options available to Indian players, Maveric Systems director P Venkatesh tells FE?s S Saroj Kumar in an interview. Excerpts:

Could you tell us about your operational presence in the Indian testing market?

We predominantly play in the BFSI segment, providing functional testing in both products and solutions. Our product revenues stand at 15% while solutions revenues at 85%. We got 20 top banking clients in India, including Citi, Standard Chartered and RBS. Europe alone is adding 60% to our repeat revenue. Currently, we are working on two system-oriented architecture (SOA) based projects with Dubai government, adding 5% to 6% to our top line from the West Asia market.

Brief us on your association with IIT Research Park.

We are one of the chosen partners in the mobile players standards body project of IIT research park, Madras. With even high-end handsets becoming cheaper and affordable, it will very much lead to a disruption of mass mobile banking where mobile devices act as a tool between a customer and his bank in all the banking related transactions. We are working on the testing side of the payer standards project.

How would m-banking trigger a fresh wave of growth in software testing?

Needless to say, as banks need more customer enrollment to expand their business, the launch of mobile banking with regulatory standards would spur growth in banking product and solution application development, which in turn would generate business for testing of banking software products to be embedded on mobile devices. Imagine the m-banking potential in India with a presence of 96 different banks, including commercial, public, private and foreign banks, together having 53,000 branches spread across the country.

What are the game-changing trends one would be witnessing in software testing?

For an application development company, nearly 25% of IT spend goes not in buying software tools, but acquiring the necessary hardware and network infrastructure. We predict that challenges would be posed to testing assignments when application developers move to the cloud space. The process of real time testing on the developer cloud is quite a challenge.

How important is R&D in the entire gamut of your business?

As we come from a consulting background, we are quite clear about our approach to business. We don?t see lucrative money in fixed price, fixed time project with its heavy dependence on readymade commercial testing tools on the market. We operate on mantra of minimum resource and maximum output. That comes from automation, rejig and reuse of design tools. This type of an agenda in action is ably supported by our R&D initiatives with 30 researchers developing custom-made tools for all our project engagements.

Tell us about the company?s PG diploma in banking and software testing programme jointly administered with Loyola institute of business administration?

The two-year course on PG diploma in banking and software testing in association with LIBA was started by us to produce high-quality talent with dual ability in finance and software. We have been successfully running the programme since last seven years. The admission to the course is made on a competitive selection basis where out of 4,000 applicants, 30 are shortlisted after the written test, group discussion and interview processes. The highlight of the course is its modular design and high degree of industry exposure with our domain experts handling a semester of the programme. We absorb some of the bright students after completion of the programme.