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Lori Valigra, Boston India’s Software Firms Look to India has been known as a hotbed for software programming, a place where overseas companies went for their year 2000 conversion and other demanding work. But recently, Indian software companies have come into their own, exporting more programs overseas and even designing cutting-edge software sold under their own brand. “Indian software companies have done outsourced programming, especially for the year 2000 problem, for the last three years, and that will continue,” said Rajkumar Chainani, chief executive officer of the Bellevue, Washington office of Ruksun Software Technologies Pvt, Ltd (www.ruksun.com) of Pune, India, which is southeast of Mumbai. “But what happens after the year 2000? More and more Indian companies will need to create their own products and brands.” India’s software exports are expected to almost double to 115 billion rupees (US$3.08 billion) in the year from April 1998 through March 1999. That’s up from 65.3 billion rupees (US$1.75 billion) in the fiscal year ended March 1998. The figures are from the National Association of Software and Services Companies of India. Almost 59% of those exports went to the US. The export trend is being spurred in part by India’s income tax holiday on software exports and the higher value of the US dollar versus the rupee. Another trend is more overseas companies, including Sun Microsystems Inc (www.sun.com) of the US, are setting up more extensive software operations or joint ventures on Indian soil, competing with Indian companies for talented workers. This means Indian companies must give their programmers more interesting work, Chainani said. Although Ruksun doesn’t do year 2000 programming, it has been a work-for-hire outsource software company for Windows, Visual C++ and Web-based development. It also focuses on Windows CE and connectivity applications for handheld PCs, Internet messaging technologies, an online calendaring application called Easy Dairy and online gameshows. The online gameshow work started in 1996 with a show for Microsoft Network known as scrawl.msn.com. It’s a 24-hour a day “dictionary” game that can handle as many as 5,000 simultaneous users.
In the game market alone, more than 15 million computer users in the US and Europe will pay US$1.4 billion to play computer games online by 2002, Chainani said, quoting data from market research company Data Monitor.
Product Focused “We pride ourselves on being a product-related company,” Chainani said. While there are some online calendaring and gameshow applications offered in the US, “we are the first company out of India to offer these applications,” he said. Chainani and his assistant are the only Ruksun staff in the US now, but there are plans to bring over 8 to 10 programmers from India in early 1999. Chainani said US customers want local staff who can work on-site. Currently, most of the work goes back to the staff of 90 in India. Plans are to set up a European office in the next 6 to 9 months. And, the US company, which now is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Indian parent, may form a US corporation in the next 3 to 6 months, Chainani said. Chainani said the company may expand the multiplayer concept into new areas that might include video, Internet telephony or application sharing. The move to sell its own leading-edge brand products is paying off. Chainani said his company is profitable, and revenue is expected to double over 1997 to US$2 million for fiscal 1998 ending March 1999.
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