US-based offshoring enterprise applications and outsourced product development services provider Sierra Atlantic Inc is seeing its newly-launched gaming vertical – one of the initiatives within its product development practice – as a major revenue spinner and expects to garner about $12 million (approximately Rs 53.64 crore) over the next 12 to 15 months. The 17-year-old company has its global development centre in Hyderabad and a delivery centre in Bangalore.
“Gaming, we believe, is a huge opportunity looking at the way the whole media world is developing and gaming companies overall are doing extremely well. At present, 100-odd professional are working out of Hyderabad for the gaming vertical. We expect to double this in a year,” Sanjay Jesrani, chief financial officer of Sierra Atlantic, told Business Standard.
Jesrani said the company was getting huge traction from Europe and looking at the popularity for consoles like Xbox, it was expecting to break into a couple of large accounts in the US as well. “We already have a set of clients in the gaming area and expect to add 8 to 10 clients this year,” he added.
Sierra Atlantic’s gaming division develops game engines and provides technology support to gaming companies to migrate games from one platform to a much broader platform. Stating that MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) is one of the markets that Sierra is targeting, Jesrani said the company had already developed a couple of sample products around MMORPG.
To hire 200 for Bangalore centre
Jesrani said the company, which currently has a 50-people strong delivery centre in Bangalore, is planning to ramp up the centre by adding 200 professional by the end of the 2010 calendar. At present, Sierra Atlantic employs 3,500 globally, of which about 1,400 work out of its Hyderabad centre.
Hyd campus Phase-II to begin next year
Work on Phase-II of the company’s $14-million (Rs 62.58 crore) campus at Gachibowli in Hyderabad will begin later next year, Jesrani said. Phase-I of the campus, with a built-up area of 200,000 sft, was inaugurated in 2008. Phase-II, which will involve a built-up area of 350,000 sft, is being planned to accommodate 3,500 employees, he said.
