Indian software firms ride aerospace boom

Indian software firms high on aerospace, both big and small and into products and services, are extremely bullish about the immediate future.

The aerospace business is already important for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country's top $1.5 billion software firm, accounting for 5 per cent of its total revenue. But parts of it are set to grow very fast.

Revenue from engineering services (the other part is IT services), which clocked around $13 million last year, is expected to grow by 100 per cent in the next two to three years, according to Regu Ayyaswamy, head of product and process engineering, engineering and industrial services (EIS).

Overseas business now predominates aerospace engineering services, accounting for 85 per cent of the total with customers among the leading global names like Boeing, Airbus, GE Aircraft Engines, Pratt & Whitney, Goodrich and Dunlop Aerospace.

But the signal the company has received from Aero India is that the share of the domestic business will grow over time in view of the deepening relationship with Indian leaders like Hindustan Aeronautics and National Aerospace Laboratories.

TCS's aerospace engineering services practice, which began in 1992, serves literally every bit of the vertical, from aircraft and engine manufacturers to their OEM and tier one suppliers to maintenance to the operators themselves. EIS helps design aircraft hardware, avionics, embedded systems and develop related software.

But it is most proud of the role it played in creating the intermediate jet trainer (IJT) which flew the first time two years ago and is now under certification. TCS designed and developed the complete collaborative platform for the IJT.

It did a "single digital model" which collapsed the design to production lifecycle from 10 years to three and a quarter, whereas it took over 20 years for HAL to get the light combat aircraft off the ground.

TCS is thus now ready with the entire range of virtual design, simulation and testing capabilities to help the domestic aerospace industry come into its own.

"From the technical perspective, the IJT is global state of the art. Broadly, we in TCS are doing some of the most advanced work in composite design, computational fluid dynamics, fatigue and fracture mechanics, manufacturing support and aftermarket services," adds Ayyaswamy.

This is the aerospace story of the biggest Indian software player which has one missing element "� it is all services and no creation of intellectual property despite having such high technical capabilities.

Enter Accord Software Systems, set up 13 years ago, now with a staff of 240 and a modest turnover of less than $3 million (2003-2004).

It has been soldering over the years mostly in aerospace on product development. It has been working for a decade on GPS (global positioning system) and with Analog Devices is now seeing its future brighten up at last.

In the current year, its turnover is likely to go up by over 80 per cent and net profit by nearly 10 percentage points to reach 25 per cent. "Whatever we do we think long term," says J M Sundaresan, managing director. His optimism is based on his expectation that the "aerospace market will be booming in the next few years."

Right now services account for 65 per cent of turnover and the jewel in the crown for Accord is its strategic partnership with Diehl Avionik Systeme, leading German avionics firm, developing elements for four onboard computers for the Airbus A380 controlling cockpit display, doors and slides management, integrated modular architecture, and slats and flaps control.

The star product awaiting US Federal Aviation Authority certification is an on-board GPS system to guide aircraft approach. By 2010, all aircraft will have to switch from the current inertial navigation system to GPS-based requiring the kind of box that Accord has developed. Accord's GPS systems with communication interface have already been a part of all ISRO satellites for four years.

The largest revenue prospects for Accord are in IP that it is developing for car telematics and navigation along with Analog Devices as their technical partner. If Accord's input clicks, it will result in huge volume sales of the total product which will be in the market this year. Accord is looking at $1 million sales in the first year and doubling every year.