Sybase to increase its focus in India

Global IT software company, Sybase, is increasing its focus in India. With 250 people in its research and development centre in Pune, the company plans to ramp up its presence significantly by 2008 while simultaneously focusing on its mobile business.

Barrie D Sheers, who recently joined as senior vice president and general manager (Asia-Pacific) Sybase, told Business Standard: "Clearly we want to increase resources and commitment in India. We will be increasing our partner strength as well as revenues coming from them.

While we will be looking at acquiring new technology, getting new customers will be crucial." He was in India to chalk out a growth strategy for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in general and for India in particular.

Sybase, which was known as a database company for long, recently acquired Mobile 365 (now known as Sybase 365), which has a significant presence in India. Terming India and China as its growth engines, the company feels India offers many business opportunities. The expenditure on infrastructure building too is far greater in India as compared to any of the other countries in Asia.

"With Sybase 365, we can now expand our offering in the mobile banking space. It is a huge potential area especially in India where rural banking has just taken off. The best part of this platform is that it is mobile-handset and service provider agnostic," said Sheers. The company already has few banks as its customers in the APAC region and has done a few proof of concepts with some Indian companies.

By integrating its mobile solutions into Sybase 365, the company plans to leverage its position in the mobile interoperator messaging including SMS and multi-media messaging (MMS). It already delivers more than 3.5 billion messages per month.

Through its extensive network of approximately 700 mobile operators, including Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Cingular, Telefonica and China Mobile, Sybase 365 will continue to focus on enabling the world's leading content providers and global brands, such as Citibank, Yahoo!, AOL, MSN and Twentieth Century Fox to mobilise their content and applications.

Catering to globally clients like China Telecom, American Airlines, Dun and Bradstreet, Sony Communication Network among others, the R&D unit has provided some significant additions to its global products. Hari Nair, director, emerging technologies, information technologies solution group, Sybase, said: "It is a key centre for our data management side and for IQ database and ASE database products. Significant amount of core work is done here." The Centre is also actively engaged in creation of IPR in the mobility and database areas

Nair feels the company's approach to keep the team small has paid out well. "The model that we have taken is to start with a small team of people and we gave them high-end work rather than maintenance work and the plan has worked well for us. The attrition is at its minimum while the work is world-class." The team at Pune has contributed significantly to all Sybase products.