CIOL: What are the emerging trends in ERP space?

EC: In the past, medium-size businesses used spreadsheets or smaller applications. However, today more of medium-size enterprises will start investing in ERP. The speed at which information is disseminated becomes lot more important when you compete on a global basis. I'm seeing a trend where mid-size enterprises will invest in Oracle type products.

On the other hand, customer service is becoming more important as business is demanding more and more information. Thus, there arises a need for better business intelligence solution in place. Previously, this was a trend only in large organizations, but today medium size businesses have also started investing in CRM.

CIOL: What are the newer offings from Infogain?

EC: Infogain, which already has huge investments in the Oracle stack of products - from ERP to CRM to business intelligence, to retail solutions -  from the technology perspective, sees a lot of traction in the business intelligence space.

The company has plans to increase people capability in CRM space and continues to invest in ERP space in order to gain more flexibility. On the retail side, the company has very strong point of sale solutions and will now grow capability around merchandising space, i.e ORMS.

The company will also invest in Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition suite (OBIEE), a relatively new solution from Oracle, as it expects companies to continue invest in it.

From the vertical perspective, the company has plans to focus and invest in telecommunications, transportation, insurance and claim management domains.

CIOL: What are Infogain's plans for India?

EC: India continues to be a lucrative market for the company, when compared to North American and European market, where there is a negative growth in terms of technology spend.

The company grew at 10 per cent quarter-over-quarter in 2009 and recently opened offices in the UK and Middle East and a development centre at Pune. Infogain is also set to open two new bases at Mumbai and Saudi Arabia, and has plans for Rajasthan, North East, Sikkim and Orissa.

Infogain has 750 of its 1,000-odd staff based in India, and the company hired roughly 40 people in the last quarter of the last fiscal. The company, which presently has 10 per cent of its revenues from India, foresees the figure going up to 20 per cent next year.

We are very bullish about the business. These investments are part of the company's long-term strategies, where it sees potential in these markets. Investments in solution, people, sales and organizations continue unabated and these investments will, in turn, accelerate the company's growth once the market recovers.