Hexaware plans Rs 150cr campus in Pune

Pune-based software services company Hexaware Technologies is planning to set up an approximately Rs 150 crore campus at Pune's Hinjewadi IT Park where it will employ up to 3,000 software professionals. The facility is expected to be operational by 2009.

Rusi Brij, vice-chairman and chief executive officer, Hexaware, said the company has acquired 25 acre land in the third phase of the Hinjewadi IT Park and will start construction soon. The company built a 3,000-people campus in Chennai recenty with an investment of Rs 150 crore. The investment in the Hinjewadi facility will be around that mark, Brij said.

Brij also informed that the company is in the final stages of negotiating a project to develop an application for postal services for a country. He did not disclose the name of the country but said it is in Asia. An announcement is likely to be made in about a month.

He added that, as in the past, the company will take the acquisition route to leapfrog its business in the U S and Europe. Brij said the target companies for acquisition would be in the $15 million annual revenue bracket and a client base in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) space. According to him the company has a cash position of around $78 million and won't need any external funding for the proposed acquisitions. "We don't have anything on hand," he clarified.

Hexaware's acquisition of Focus Five last year has helped accelerate the software testing business as it has shown a steep rise in 2007. The company's revenue from testing services was $13 million in 2006 and is expected to cross $50 million this year, Brij said, adding the income from this segment was $10 million in the first quarter of the current year.

The company's Pune centre has been expanding steadily as the headcount has gone up from 250 initially to over 500 now, and is expected to grow by another 350 during the next few months. Brij said the Pune centre will focus on Japan-based clients as well as projects in the Java and .Net technology space in addition to its ERP system implementation business. Currently, the company has a team of 100 to look after the Japan-based projects and this number is rising, he added.