Hinduja Group firm Defiance Technologies is planning to tie up with a French IT company to offer design and engineering solutions through cloud platform. It would also finalise an acquisition in the US or Europe in 2012-13, said a senior executive from the company.
The company is in talks with Dassault Systèmes, a Paris-based firm with expertise in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions and aerospace segment, to offer solutions over cloud, said Subu D Subramanian, managing director and chief executive officer, Defiance Technologies. “We are in discussion with Dassault Systèmes and plans are to go for proof of concept and pilot projects in around six months to make it available to the market,” he said.
The company targets small business enterprises to use the solutions on cloud. Plans are to offer cloud services to its clients, starting from Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions to certain industry clusters like automotive clusters.
Later, the cloud based solutions would be extended to design and engineering and testing and simulation solutions services for its customers including aerospace and automobile industries. The partner company would offer the cloud compatible architecture technology to Defiance Technologies.
The business plan is to offer pay-per-use model for solutions like designing solutions which are not required frequently by the companies, thus making purchase of the amenities for this unviable for most of the small and medium business enterprises. Defiance Technologies would require an upfront investment to set up the infrastructure to offer the cloud service.
“The initial investment would run into a few crores, though we may have to invest more later,” he said.
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However, many of the decisions would be finalized only after the signing of partnership.
Meanwhile, the company is also looking at acquisitions in US and Europe and plans are to finalise minimum one acquisition in the fiscal year 2012-13.
“We are looking at both value based acquisition to build up expertise and competency of volume based acquisition to increase our engineering service capabilities,” said Subramanian.
The value-based buy of an estimated worth of $5-20 million is expected to bring in boutique, niche companies with strength of around 50 to 100 people, while the volume based acquisition would attract $50-100 million investment to add around 500 to 1000 people to the existing strength. The acquisitions would be in engineering, SAP or new technology segments, where the company has its focus on.
It would also invest in expanding operations in US, Europe, India, Middle East and Africa, to strengthen its operations. “We have around 1,500 people now and it may double by 2012-13, organically. This would not include the manpower added through acquisitions,” said Subramanian.
The company would also build a Platinum Consulting Team, hiring experts from big five IT companies to provide high quality services to its customers.
Defiance Technologies is a provider of Engineering, ERP and IT services to global customers leveraging the global delivery model. Founded in 1976 in USA, the company was later acquired by the Hinduja Group.