CDC eyes India acquisitions to propel growth

Bangalore, Dec 19 - CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corp and a provider of industry-specific enterprise software applications and business services, plans strategic acquisitions in India to expand its presence and scale up its client base, a senior company official said here Wednesday.

'We have short-listed a few firms, including a couple located in India as part of their global operations. We are looking for small and medium firms which have $20-30 million revenue but command higher valuation,' CDC Software India managing director Nagaraja Prakasam told reporters here.

'Our acquisition strategy is to add value to our CRM (customer relationship management) product offerings and be a one-stop solution for the enterprise class. Increasingly, customers want to deal with less vendors to reduce deployment time and lower the total cost of ownership,' he added.

Accounting for 90 percent of the $400-million CDC Corp's revenue, the US-based software subsidiary provides enterprise applications in the CRM, ERP (enterprise resource planning) and SCM (supply chain management) domains to enable its customers worldwide improve efficiencies and profitability through a suite of products such as Pivotal CRM, Saratoga CRM, CDC Factory, Ross ERP and CDC Supply Chain.

As CDC's only major software development centre outside Atlanta in the US, the Bangalore facility undertakes about 90 percent of the product development and offers support services to its parent company's global customers across financial services, telecom, manufacturing, healthcare, real estate and wholesale, retail and distribution industries.

'Though we have been operating in India over the last five years developing products and services, we have recently started hard-selling our products such as Pivotal CRM. The Bangalore-base TTK Services Ltd, which offers personalised services to its clients, including non-resident Indians (NRIs), is our first customer to deploy Pivotal CRM,' Prakasam said.

The market size for CRM products in the sub-continent is estimated to be $40 million and growing at about 40 percent annually.

As the CRM market matures, the company plans to offer its other products such as CDC Factory, Ross ERP and CDC Supply Chain from next year to increase its customer base in India.

'Our products and services span the life cycle of technology and software applications, including implementation, project consulting, outsourced business services, application management and offshore development,' Prakasam pointed out.

To expand its software development and marketing operations, the subsidiary will ramp up its headcount to about 500 over the next 12-18 months from 300 presently, including 127 engineers.

Incidentally, about 50 percent of its current headcount came on board following the acquisition of the US-based Horizon Services Ltd and its India offshore development centre in 2006.

CDC Software is a new entrant in the Indian CRM market dominated by a dozen global players such as SAP and Oracle.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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