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Cybage in Media - 2006 |
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14-12-06, Thursday: The Indian Express, Pune |
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Contexts for future technologies are many – technologies from end user
perspective, technologies from offshore perspective, technologies from
research and new development perspective et cetera, but the most relevant
for us is something related to our career. Today, if we ask anyone in the IT
industry to name the top 10 technology companies that come to their minds;
the probability of them naming Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP & Sun (Java) as
the first five is extremely high. I think the fight is surely on for rest of
the 5 places and contenders are the likes of Google, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon,
BEA.
In an industry where the first mover is supposed to have a significant
advantage over others, Microsoft has always turned the table in medium to
long term over first movers. Even non IT people by and large know the
incredible history of Microsoft and how it changed the face of computers but
probably what is even more incredible is to know how they evolved SQL
Server, .NET and the latest entrant Zune. IT professionals with expertise in
Microsoft technologies need not worry about their future at all; for such an
IT professional to lose, Microsoft has to lose, which doesn’t seem likely
even in the long-term. However, one always has to upgrade knowledge to
remain in the thick of things.
It is very interesting to know how Microsoft offshores and engages with
customers along with its licensing policies to spread its market-share. If
we compare reasons for offshoring, the top two reasons would be cost
advantages and shortage of man power or technical skills. Microsoft probably
is a dream company for majority of IT professionals. Considering that, will
they have a shortage of man power? It doesn’t seem so. It’s a resource rich
company. Will it offshore just for saving dollars? Again, it doesn’t seem
so. Even if Microsoft wants to save dollars, it has its own development
centers in India and can ramp-up operations in these centers. However, when
it offshores its work to a vendor such as Cybage, the unique advantage
Microsoft gets is a potential customer for its tools and creates a virtual
team of evangelists who sell Microsoft technologies to other customers.
Take an example of Cybage; our CEO, Arun Nathani founded Cybage in 1995, and
we were Microsoft’s VC++ (MFC) shop for some time before we added other
Microsoft technologies over next three years and later got into Java in
early 1999. Java was the technology for most of the new implementation those
days and Cybage Java group became the largest group in Cybage by 2000. Even
after the dot com burst, Java was going strong and was the preferred choice
until the advent of .NET in 2001. Microsoft .NET started eating up Java
group’s share at Cybage, but the real thrust came when Cybage became a
Microsoft Vendor in 2003 and subsequently a Microsoft Preferred Vendor, a
status enjoyed by only a few select organizations across the world. A
professional definitely cannot become obsolete following Microsoft
technologies that will surely be there in future and at the forefront.
IBM is larger than Microsoft, SAP, Oracle & Sun and will be at the forefront
due to its system integration expertise and large mainframe systems
deployments. In fact, Microsoft, SAP & Oracle are purely software companies;
by virtue of that and due to its large size, IBM is surely going to be
leading the way in the future and it’s pretty safe for an IT professional to
gain expertise in IBM products.
Oracle is an incredible story and it is there to stay. At the face of it,
every application does need a good database to bank on and things cannot go
wrong for the top two databases in the world. Oracle has been a leader on
the database side. Although in recent times Microsoft is giving tough
competition to Oracle, it is still early to speculate on Microsoft bypassing
Oracle in the near future. As an IT professional, having expertise on Oracle
is a kind of guarantee to land up with a good career. With Oracle 10g
release in 2003 through to last year’s release of a free database engine XE
and recent release of unstructured content database, it is clear that Oracle
is not going to lose easily to Microsoft.
Founded on April fool’s day in 1972, SAP is a no fool company and currently
the third largest independent software vendor in the world. Since its
inception, it has done great business and if history is to be believed, it
is going to be here in future. This is one of the few organizations whose
curve has always been towards north. The cost of SAP implementation used to
be one of the prohibitive factors. However, in the last couple of years, SAP
has worked on releasing lighter versions of SAP that are available at far
lesser cost; this is going to help SAP get an even bigger market share. The
trick is to capture all businesses - large, medium and small - and SAP seems
to be geared towards that. Professionals with expertise in technical
implementation can bet on a good career here; challenge though is to get
good training.
In the developer community, Sun is known more for Java than for its systems.
Undoubtedly, .NET has impacted Java, but Java is still around and will be
there in the future as well. This is because Java brought about a paradigm
shift in the process of development and before .NET posed challenge to Java,
hell of a lot of investment had already been done by companies across the
globe. As a company, Sun has been struggling; apart from the emergence of
.NET, the instability of Sun has also impacted the cause of Java. However,
Sun has been trying to revive itself; nonetheless, even if we consider its
efforts not coming through in the near future, by virtue of its current
market share, Sun is going to be around in the future. Cybage is a software
service company that specializes in Outsourced Product Development (OPD) and
Offshore Development Center (ODC) - our business is closely linked with
trends with technologies. And going by the trend, we can see that Java is
going to be there along with .NET in the future.
For existing IT professionals, their current expertise is surely going to
give them a good career, but for a budding IT professional, looking into the
future is important before picking up a technology to master. |
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7-12-06, Thursday: The Indian Express, Pune |
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India’s recent growth story has still a long way to
go and if we want to realize dream of making India as economic super power,
training and development/learning is extremely important. We have enormous
advantage of age and have abundant man power available, however, when it
comes to quality of man power; we hear shortage of it everywhere. A lot has
been discussed about institute-industry interface (III) and it started
happening with few good initiatives of handful of organizations, institutes
and government but result of these initiatives is still far. III is a long
term solution but problem of quality man power is all - short, medium and
long term.
Role of corporate training and development in the long term solution is
significant but comparatively less and little different than what it is for
short to medium term. In absence of adequate and correct training and
development, corporate India will not be able to sustain its growth. This
issue becomes even more threatening when we keep the fact on the table that
growth what we have been seeing is just the beginning and major all-round
growth is yet to come. The good part is the acknowledgement that corporate
India has been echoing about this and Cybage, one of the fastest growing IT
Company in India is not untouched by it.
Cybage realized importance of this department at a very young stage when
Cybage was 25 people company compared to today’s 2000 people. Challenges
then and today are different but for IT industry as a whole, we had shortage
of quality man power right from start. Add to it sea change in customer
expectation in last decade; as offshore has become more accepted, customer
expectation has gone up too. Earlier as a company and probably true as
country, we use to do more of low and non strategic work for customers and
today, we work on products that are lifeline of customers. Their business
depends on these now and there is no place for outsourcing partner to make
any mistake. All this makes role of training and development department very
important for the growth of the organization.
Cybage’s training and development department is divided in three categories
- technical, cultural and behavioral. Each division is headed by a senior
manager and progress is very closely monitored with respect to the goals set
by CEO, Arun Nathani. Cybage’s COO Deepak Nathani has a very interesting
vision that training and development department doesn’t need a budget; if a
training is required, it is required, where does budget comes into the
picture. Due to this very interesting and innovative vision of Deepak, we
have never seen any training not getting approved at Cybage for budgetary
reason.
Technology in IT industry changes very fast and because we serve global
customers, we can’t afford to be lagging in technical expertise if we want
to provide a quality outsourcing services to the world. Cybage has a
technology pool which is divided into center of excellence for different
technology areas namely Microsoft, Sun, Open Source and Others. Focus of
this pool is to master new technologies and prepare a trickle down plan to
ensure we remain technically competent to serve our customers. Before
forming this pool although we had satisfied customer, our position on value
chain was considerably lower than what we have today.
By having effective and efficient training plan for technology an
organization is covered for probably 30% of training and development need
but it is still less than even one third. Over a period of time we have
realized it is employee’s attitude that matters a lot. A person may be
wonderful technically but if he is a misfit in a team, delivery becomes very
challenging. Changing someone’s behavior is a development process that takes
time but without that, technical training remains unutilized to a great
extent. Cybage conducts need analysis which is very similar to competency
mapping and observations are made about employees behavioral patterns. After
this, a training plan is prepared for the employee to take him to a certain
level. Cultural training is geared towards making an employee a Cybagian to
give same quality of services to different customers apart from making an
employee comfortable and effective while traveling abroad.
One important task of training and development department is to figure out
what mix (technical, behavioral and cultural) and how much is enough for an
organization. Cybage has been pioneer in OPD (outsourced product
development) and setting up ODCs (Offshore Development Center). Our business
model has been predominantly offshore. Considering the above-cited facts,
while we were small, we focused mainly on technical training and today, we
focus equally on technical and behavioral training and cultural training is
at third place and it will remain that way for long due to our unique
business model of predominantly offshore.
On the how much side industry average training time is about 40-50 hours per
year per employee but it really depends on parameters like organization’s
size, customer base, domain, culture and business model. Cybage’s average
has been 42 hours per year per employee and we cover more than 88% employees
every year. I have been heading this department for Cybage’s throughout its
transformation from a very small company of 25 employees to a decent size
company of 2000 employees in 7 years and training and development mix has
been different at different times. Today, when we look back and do root
cause of what really has propelled us to grow – role of training and
development comes out as one of the few very important tasks.
Consider the fact that institutes are not able to produce man power which is
equally good technically and behaviorally (its often spiked in favor of one
of these two) majority of available people are unemployable but
organizations are still forced to take many of them on board to survive.
Culturally anyway is a big gap in Indian mindset and what is required to
serve global customer base. All this pushes role of employee training and
development to the driver’s seat. Jim Collins of ‘Good to Great Companies’
says, put your best man where the best opportunity is, however, today it
seems this problem is probably bigger than best opportunity at least for
short to medium period. I personally feel an organization without effective
training and development is more like a living being without required
nutrition and a low par performance or even slow death is inevitable. |
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2-12-06, Saturday: The Times of India,
Ahmedabad |
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Cybage Software, signs an MoU for an investment in Gandhinagar to the tune
of Rs 10 crore at the Vibrant Gujarat IT summit in Ahmedabad on 1st
December, 2006. The IT summit 2006 was organized by the government of
Gujarat with support from NASSCOM and the IT industry. (Extracts from The
Times of India, Ahmedabad, 2nd December 2006.)
The IT Summit
The IT-BPO industry in India has witnessed sustainable growth and is
expected to cross US$60 billion in exports by 2010. The country today has
emerged as the preferred outsourcing destination and offers an unmatched
advantage of cost competitiveness, innovation and quality. The growth of the
IT sector in India has also outlined the need to develop new IT-BPO cities
and upgrade the talent pool of knowledge workers in the country.
The Government of Gujarat in partnership with NASSCOM and the IT industry
has been working towards creating an enabling environment for IT-BPO
companies to set-up operations in the state. An integrated IT policy,
state-of-the-art infrastructure development and a strong focus towards human
capital development are some of the steps being taken by the government.
The focus of the summit is to enable industry captains and entrepreneurs to
converge at a common forum. The summit would enable the participants and
potential investors to discuss the variety of reasons why investing in
Gujarat makes a profitable business case and how the Government of Gujarat
can partner with the industry for creating a success story. |
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18-09-06, Wednesday: The Economic Times |
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In this day and age of offshore production assemblies mushrooming all over
the globe, it is a daunting task for any software services company to
showcase its distinction to attract employees when the differentiators have
started blending more and more smoothly. Particularly if one is targeting
top-notch Indian IT professionals who have a choice to pick from an enormous
pool of software development houses that are now recognized as amongst the
best in the world. Today, there are several offshore companies of fine
repute operating out of India; however, only few of them truly stand out in
delivering strong growth opportunities for its employees. One of the leaders
in this segment is Cybage Software Pvt. Ltd. The Economic Times spoke to
Deepak Nathani, COO and co-founder, Cybage Software Pvt. Ltd. Excerpts from
the interview about the company and industry issues.
What is your philosophy for success?
Cybage is a small, big company - the management has made a conscious
attempt to incorporate a unique assortment of the best opportunities that an
employee looks for in both, large and small organizations. The company has
the infrastructure, processes and job security at par with any large brand.
Yet in spite of its reckonable size and explosive growth, what Cybage
doesn’t have is the redundancy - that massive bureaucratic layer which is
generally associated with a bulky organization and stands in the way of an
employee’s recognition and growth. Instead the company has retained a
reasonably flat hierarchy with a very personalized touch and attention that
is typical of a small, privately-held company. There are abundant
opportunities to prove so that a new arrival doesn’t feel that he has missed
the "bus". Indeed, most of Cybage top management cream has not come from
poaching across high-profile IT organizations, but from the time-tested
basic principle of recognizing in-house talent in time, and organically
grooming them to take up leadership roles in shaping organization’s future.
What is Cybage's major strength? How do you look at competition?
Our major strength is in the growing Outsourced Product Development (OPD)
space which ensures cutting-edge technology work for its employees. In the
specialized OPD domain catering mainly to ISV clientele, there are only a
few Indian companies who are its direct competitors and Cybage is surely one
of the fastest growing companies in this segment.
Elaborate on the work environment and culture at Cybage?
The quality of work environment Cybage offers its employees extends
beyond the technology. The company is known for its pleasant
employee-friendly work environment. The organization believes in an ‘open
door’ policy which encourages employees to create a free but responsive
working style. As for life beyond the call of duty, the pulse at Cybage is
always alive and felt through various activities it conducts. There is also
a feeling of concern and responsibility towards the society as well.
What is the biggest challenge facing the Indian IT industry today?
The biggest challenge facing Indian IT industry today is employee
volatility - all software professionals are looking for rapid growth
opportunities. So how does a candidate confirm which organization offers the
best growth opportunities? To answer this question, one needs to first
understand the basic underlying financial principle on which Indian IT
industry operates. Indian offshore industry, predominantly being service
oriented is all about billing by heads. Now here is the trick - billing
rates can increase only marginally in the face of fierce competition.
So, how do IT companies manage to give relentless salary hikes to their
professionals and still manage to maintain respectable bottom lines?
Here is how it works - when companies grow, they hire a mix of fresh and
experienced talent in the market. Result - the average salary gets a pull
from two directions - each appraisal pushes the salary northwards, each
fresh recruit pulls it southwards. So more the influx of new recruits; more
is the potential for the company to give heftier raises to its employees,
and thereby retaining them. In other words, a faster growing company can
afford to offer higher raises to its employees and still manage to keep cost
under control. This is where Cybage advantage lies. Cybage is one of the
fastest growing IT companies in India, growing at an annual rate varying
from 50 to 100% in each of the last 11 years of its existence. This growth
is twice the cumulative growth of Indian IT industry, and as a result the
same pattern is reflected in the growth path of employees who work for
Cybage. |
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October 06: Dalal Street |
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Interview of Arun Nathani, CEO & founder, Cybage Software Pvt. Ltd, Pune
How is your company positioned in the Software Sector?
Our major strength is Outsourced Product Development (OPD). We have grown at
an average rate of 60-70 percent in the last 11 years in sales and profits
and are a strong team of 1930 people. 80% of our business comes from North
America and rest from Europe, Australia & New Zealand. We are SEI-CMMI Level
5 Company spread across Pune, Hyderabad & USA. Another new centre is coming
up in Ahmedabad. Data Quest has ranked our company as the 12th Best Employer
in the country in a recent survey conducted by them nationally. We do not
believe in flashing our brand but are focused on our business model. Our
state-of-the-art development centers have skilled professionals on board
with expertise in varied technologies. We are serving over 100 clients
across 4 continents and have projects spread across varied business
verticals and technologies.
What is your core business and who are your major clients?
We are predominantly in ISV space (Independent Software Vendors) wherein we
develop products for our clients. Ours is a highly technological company
offering the best offshore services. Our core competency lies in the
development and maintenance of distributed and enterprise-wide robust
applications using the latest technologies. Our services include: software
development, software maintenance, software re-engineering, offshore
development centres (ODC), quality assurance & testing, R&D and technology
consultation, process consultation, technical support, technical
documentation and user interface design & development. Some of the domains
we specialize in are Internet Advertising, E-commerce, Travel and
Hospitality, BFSI and Healthcare. Our clients include Microsoft, HSBC Bank,
Electronic Arts to name a few.
Tell us about your skills as an entrepreneur?
I am the founder CEO with an Engineering degree from India and Masters from
USA. After working in USA for 5 years I set up this company with my brother
Deepak Nathani who is now the Chief Operating Officer of the company.
What has been your strategy for growth?
We have grown on our strengths and without any acquisitions. Our growth in
the last decade has come through good references and by keeping our
customers happy. We are proud to call ourselves ‘A small big company’ which
means that we have the flexibility and fast decision making qualities of a
small company and maturity and branding of a big company. We expect annual
growth rate of about 50- 60 percent in our specialized areas for the next
4-5 years as the market is huge and almost all big companies have a good
budget for outsourcing. We have grown on our own and never raised any
venture capital. We are a genuine company with scalable growth and having
the capabilities to retain our customers.
How do you look at competition?
In our specialized area of Outsourced Product Development, there are only a
few Indian companies who are our direct competitors but we are surely one of
the fastest growing companies in this segment.
Tell us about your growth and expansion plans.
We believe in a planned and managed growth and thinking ahead of the time.
We have opened a new development centre in Hyderabad. This facility is
located at landmark 'Cyber Towers' that hosts development facilities of some
global IT giants like Microsoft, Oracle and GE Capital. Another new centre
is coming up in Ahmedabad. In Pune too, we are setting up an additional
campus with a capacity to accommodate 4000 engineers.
What are the challenges?
Our challenge is the same as the one facing the Indian IT industry in
general, i.e. high volatility of employees’ movement and associated wage
increases to retain and attract good talent. Of course, like all challenges
– this provides an opportunity as well. Companies that can come up with
mature models that mitigate the business risks associated with attrition and
innovative retention processes for valuable employees, are the ones who will
come out winners over a period of time. I believe Cybage has quite maturely
evolved its business model to address this challenge and we are geared to
continue sustaining our high growth rates without any scalability issues
arising out of general volatility in the market.
How do you foresee the future of your company?
I see Cybage to be Rs.260 crore company with 2800+ employees by March 2008,
and sustaining 50% growth rate thereafter. |
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September 2006: DataQuest-IDC IT Best
Employers’ Survey 2006 |
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Cybage Software, recognized as one of the fastest growing offshore software
services companies in India has achieved the coveted 12th position among the
Top 20 Best IT Employers of the year in India. The ranking was a result of
the comprehensive annual survey by DataQuest and IDC on Indian Tech
companies.
Cybage focuses on work life balance and a low-stress work culture and sees
work environment, growth opportunities and type of work and projects as the
top three reasons for employees joining the organization. The professional
growth factor also reflects in the survey result, as it ranks fifth on
employee perception of managers genuinely caring about their professional
and personal growth. It ranks a commendable seventh on the count of
supervisors giving recognition immediately for outstanding work done. One
key focus area during the year was getting employee feedback and
understanding their expectations. It initiated ‘1 on 1’ feedback sessions,
‘Meet My HR Manager’ counseling sessions, employee surveys and open house
sessions with the HR. Some new initiatives undertaken during the year
include team building exercises and 360-degree performance appraisals.
About the DQ-IDC Best Employer Survey
The DQ-IDC Best Employer Survey has been conducted among 250 IT companies
selected and screened through a set of predefined criteria. The survey based
on the responses of 3,006 employees of the participating companies has
sought information on HR-related information like training days, retention,
salary hike, size of the organization, revenue CAGR and employee
satisfaction. |
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31-08-06, Thursday: The Times Of India |
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Cybage Software, a mature leading offshore software services company, lays
claim to being a place where, as Deepak Nathani, COO and Co-Founder of the
company states, "every employee feels happy to come to work everyday". Top
Career Destination interviews him to find out what makes Cybage a coveted
place for IT employees to be in.
Your advertisements often project Cybage as the place to be in. What
makes the Cybage experience unique?
The Cybage experience is unique because of a combination of factors; the
wide spectrum of projects available in the company ensures that each
candidate is offered a variety of 'technical challenges'. The unique culture
of Cybage and our focus on having a great work-life balance is also a big
draw for employees. To add to, we are conveniently located at Kalyani Nagar,
which is easily accessible and cuts on travel of employees. Now, when you
are part of an organization like Cybage that is growing at such a rapid
pace, your career too reflects growth.
What is your recruitment process like?
We recruit freshers from reputed engineering colleges. Cybage is certainly a
very attractive destination for freshers; even as they undergo extensive
training, they are associated with live projects and gain practical
experience much faster than several other large IT firm’s. We recruit
experienced professionals through applications sent on our website, employee
reference, internal database and by conducting walk-ins at regular
intervals.
How do you plan to get new talent when lot of companies are targeting the
same talent pool?
Our work and culture are our biggest assets, so we have the best of talent
joining us.
Many of your HR policies are employee-friendly. Tell us about a few.
Overall, we have a well-planned and structured HR setup, with core focus on
employee's personal and professional development. We care for our employees
and to elaborate, we formed an Employee Welfare Trust where each employee
contributes a nominal amount every month to meet any unforeseen expenses
incurred by a fellow employee or an immediate family member. We also have an
employee counseling system in operation to assist those who seek
professional and personal guidance. Further, we have a 360-degree feedback
system which monitors the feedback not only of subordinates but also that of
managers.
What kind of policy exists for rewarding exceptional performance?
Whenever an exceptional performance is displayed by an individual or a team,
the senior management is made aware. We think being connected and
appreciated by the management goes a long way in boosting an employees’
morale than receiving an occasional monetary reward. Of course, individual
performance is counted in the next appraisal and the employee gets awarded
suitably.
Tell us about the Cybage work environment and the culture.
At Cybage, we believe in an ‘open door’ policy which has encouraged
employees to create a free but responsive working style. We empower our
managers and avoid unnecessary layers in the decision-making process. This
ensures work moves at an efficient and effective pace at all times.
As for life beyond the call of duty, the pulse at Cybage is always alive and
felt through various activities it conducts. Be it yoga classes, adventure
trails, sport competitions like IT tournaments, Cricket, Table-tennis and
Pool to festivities celebration, fashion shows and even ballroom dancing!
Apart from all these fun-filled activities, I would like to make a special
mention of CybageAsha - a voluntary program driven exclusively by our
employees. And it is through this program, Cybagians fulfill their social
responsibilities towards the less privileged in society. |
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03-08-06, Thursday: Financial Express |
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The Pune-based 109 crore Cybage Software is on an expansion drive, setting
up development centers in other cities. While it recently announced its
fifth facility in Hyderabad, the first outside Pune, the company plans to
set up centers in Ahmedabad and other cities. The Hyderabad centre will add
200 employees to Cybage’s current headcount of 1600. Located at ‘Cyber
Towers,’ this office space hosts development facilities of Microsoft, Oracle
and GE Capital too. |
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02-08-06, Wednesday: Economic Times |
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Form being a startup company in 1995 to a mature mid-sized leading offshore
software services company, Pune based Cybage Software has come a long way
and is poised to grow even further with its aggressive expansion and
investment plans. Arun Nathani, CEO and MD of the company discusses Cybage's
differentiating factors, key strengths and growth and expansion plans in the
near term. Excerpts from his interview with Pradeep Akkunoor for The
Economic Times....
You started off in 1995 - what has changed from 1995 to 2006?
The mid-nineties were the time for start-ups. There were a lot of
companies that setup base suring this time, and some of them have survived
and thrived. However, today's business climate is more suited to mature
players. This is and era where proven business models and delivery
capabilities are more critical and startups will find it very difficult to
compete with established service providers. Today, the software development
model has almost become a commodity, so unless you are able to differentiate
yourself in the market, it is very difficult to survive and succeed.
So how does Cybage differentiate itself in this market?
Much like the city of Pune, which has the infrastructure and facilities
comparable to a big city, at the same time, a culture and tradition of a
small city, Cybage is the best of big and small company. We have the best
processes and execution capabilities of a big company, at the same time,
personalized focus and touch of a smaller firm. Also, we have a very focused
business model in the growing Outsourced Product Development space catering
primarily to the Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). This is a niche market
and we are one of the leading players in this segment.
You count among your clients such big firms as Microsoft, Electronic Arts
and Double Click. Why do such companies prefer to work with Cybage instead
of giving all work to or setting us their own Offshore Development Centers?
This is a very important question, not just for Cybage but for the
entire IT industry. The "operational efficiency" justifies the choice of
such work coming to Cybage - it is a much more efficient, scalable and
economical proposition for these companies to work with a partner like us
who specializes in running a quality driven offshore house.
Does it mean you have dedicated resources for each partner?
Yes. Ours is not a typical contract-vendor relationship; we play more
the role of partners to them. We sit with the client to understand their
requirements and help in forming a team. Once that has been done, the
dedicated resources for these clients will work just as an extension of the
client company's own employment setup. This gives the partner total
flexibility and control over the projects.
Being an IT services company, the Quality and Information Security
processes may be very critical to you - can you tell us about how you manage
them at Cybage?
We are an SEI-CMMI Level 5 company - and it is a testimony to the
highest level of maturity of processes that we have at Cybage. We also
recently kicked off ISO 27001 initiative that will help is establish an
effective information security management system and business continuity
plan using a continual improvement approach.
Tell us about your growth and expansion plans.
We believe in a planned and managed growth and thinking ahead of the
time. We have opened a new development centre in Hyderabad. This facility is
located at landmark 'Cyber Towers' that hosts development facilities of some
global IT giants like Microsoft, Oracle and GE Capital.
We have plans of further expansion in Ahmedabad and other cities in India.
In Pune too, we recently acquired an additional facility to accommodate 300
engineers. Meanwhile, our own campus is also being setup in Pune with a
capacity to accommodate around 4000 engineers.
In the coming years where is the maximum growth going to come from -
geographically?
The global markets are more interconnected than ever. A company may be
headquartered in the US, but we may work with its offices in other
countries, so I wouldn't outline any geography as such; growth will come
from all locations. |
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20-07-06, Thursday: Business Standard |
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Launching its operations in Hyderabad with a 100-seater facility, Pune-
based Cybage Software announced its plans to invest Rs 70 crore for the
development of a 4,000-seater campus. Speaking to reporters, Arun Nathani,
Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Cybage, said while Pune will
remain the key city for the company as it plans a Rs 70 crore investment
here to build a 4,000-seater campus, “The Hyderabad centre was necessary as
it offered closer proximity to Microsoft, a strategic customer and other
MNCs besides offering good skill sets.” Also on the cards is a centre in
Ahmedabad in the coming year, he confirmed. With a facility for 100 people
in Cyber Towers at Hyderabad currently, “The company also has planned phase
II in Hyderabad in which it will double its capacity to have 200 people,”
said Nathani. The company currently has 1,600 employees spread across its US
centre and Pune and has recruited 200 freshers which will join the company
in the next two months, taking its employee tally upto 1,800 people. Growing
at 100-160 per cent since its inception 11 years ago, the offshore product
development company, “Recorded revenues of Rs 109 crore in the financial
year 2005-06 and is targeting 50 per cent growth to become a Rs 170-180
crore company in FY’07,” said Nathani. With growth and expansion high on its
agenda, the company is also planning acquisitions to strengthen its
offerings. “We are considering inorganic growth with one or two acquisitions
of companies’ upto $10 million,” said Nathani. The time frame for the
acquisitions, he said, “could be as soon as six months or even longer.” |
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20-07-06, Thursday: Times of India |
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Pune: Pune-based offshore software services company Cybage Software is
rapidly expanding its operations beyond the city.
The 11-year old company, which has been growing at an average rate of 70 per
cent, has opened a development centre in Hyderabad that would be rubbing
shoulders with the likes of Microsoft, GE and Oracle at 'Cybage Towers'. "We
have plans of further expansion in Ahmedabad and a few other cities in
India. Each location has its advantages, which we want to tap to get the
best value," said Arun Nathani, CEO and MD of Cybage Software.
For instance, Hyderabad is known for its talent in horizontal skills like
Visual C++, he said.
He said the 10,000 sq-ft, Hyderabad centre would primarily cater to the
company's key clients in that city, apart from working in the area of
outsourced product development services.
They include Microsoft, its second largest client contributing over $4
million for the company and HSBC Bank Development centre.
The city also has other multi-national companies which the company plans to
tap. The centre is starting with 100 people and will double headcount by the
end of this year.
Meanwhile, Cybage is building a 3 lakh sq-ft. campus in Pune to house 4,000
engineers. This is for consolidating the company's operations in the city.
It has 1,600 people working with it, at present. The campus will come up at
Kalyaninagar. |
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