SAP plans to double employee strength in India

SAP, the leading business software solutions provider, is planning up its investments in India. The company has decided to open another centre in the country apart from the Global Support Centre in Bangalore.

Further, the company plans to double its employee strength to over 2,000 from 1,000 at present.

The company said that the company is planning to bring sizable investment in to the country for its new centre.

SAP is also planning to tap the potential of the Indian sub-continent by entering countries such as Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.

"SAP's investment in India continues with the upgrade of the India Support Centre to a Global Support Centre servicing SAP customers worldwide. The centre will initially focus on providing services for advanced products such as SAP NetWeaver, SAP Web Application Server, and SAP Enterprise Portal.

"This is a recognition of both the size and importance of the Indian market as also the high quality talent available here," Srinivas Rao, director-sales, small and mid-size business, SAP India Pvt Ltd told Business Standard.

SAP has established a strong base in Sri Lanka by providing solutions to Bank of Ceylon, Sri Lanka telecom, MAS Holding group, Eagle Insurance, Slimline and Linea Aqua amongst others. Some of SAP's customers in Bangladesh includes Novartis. SAP is also aggressive in Nepal.

India is among the top four emerging markets for SAP globally. The company expects achieve a three-fold growth by 2005 through an accelerated growth plan. Last year, the company has grown by over 70 per cent in India alone.

According to an IDC estimate , SAP India's share of pie is over 60 per cent in the ERP and over 29 per cent in the CRM.

"SAP is bullish about growth in India, among its market in the Asia-Pacific region, India is among the top four markets in the region, the other three being Australia, China and Korea. SAPs lab in Bangalore was the firm's largest and fastest growing development centre outside Germany and that there was a increasing trend of moving development work from other countries such as China to the Bangalore centre," said Rao.

Established in 1996, SAP India is a wholly owned subsidiary of SAP AG.