Indian unit fastest growing arm of SAP

Business software provider SAP today announced that SAP India has emerged as the fastest growing subsidiary for the company worldwide following a recording-breaking performance during the 2007 financial year.

Though the company did not reveal the contribution of India towards its overall earnings, SAP Indian Subcontinent President & CEO Ranjan Das said the region was among the 'top 10' revenue generators.

"The Indian subcontinent has leapfrogged several places to enter the top 10 which includes other developed regions such as the US, Germany and Japan," he added.

He said the company witnessed unprecedented growth of 100 per cent both in terms of licence revenues and customer-base.

"This performance is the best ever for the company since the inception of Indian operations in 1996. The number of customers has more than doubled from 1,350 in December 2006 to 3,024 in December 2007," he said.

SAP India was also declared as the 'hub of the year' across SAP Asia-Pacific Japan. He pointed out that Indian companies were aggressively pursuing the growth agenda, domestically and globally. "We see multiple opportunities for growth. SAP India has also witnessed growth across all aspects of business, including education an software services," Das stated.

According to IDC study, SAP commands 34.4 per cent market share in enterprise resource planning (ERP), 34.8 per cent in customer relationship management (CRM) and 39.9 per cent in the supply chain management (SCM) markets.

He said SAP Education is witnessing fast growth in the country. "It is growing at a rate of 50 per cent in India year-on-year basis. Over 6,000 were trained 2006 and more than 35 e-learning centres have been set up," he added.

The Asia-Pacific region contributes 13 per cent to SAP's revenues. When SAP CEO Henning Kagermann visited India last year, he had said SAP planned to increase the contribution to 20 per cent in the coming years.

The country is the third largest subsidiary for SAP in terms of employees (4,835). Recently, it opened a development centre in Bangalore to accommodate up to 2,000 professionals.

In 2006, the company had announced that it would be investing $1 billion in India till 2010. The company has a direct presence in 9 cities in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

"At present, the investment is being at various levels. We expect this growth momentum to continue this year also. We will continue to focus on public sector, retail, banking and financial sectors, government utilities and energy companies for growth," Das stated.

He said the company will increase the participants in the SAP partner Ecosystem programme. At present, it has in excess of 200 partners across solutions and geographies. It also has three global service partners in the country "" Wipro, TCS and HCL.