Adea aims at reaching out to Middle East

Adea aims at reaching out to Middle East

Chinese operation of the company to get widened; Hyderabad center to have ramp up in headcount

Dheeksha Rabindra

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

BANGALORE, INDIA: Dallas-based Adea Technologies, a company focused on high-end consulting, SAP and IT services, plans to have increased focus on China and expand its operations to the Middle East market.

The company is also planning to hire over 200 employees in Hyderabad by September this year.

Adea had set up its China unit in the last quarter. It is now looking to set up a center in the Middle East in the coming 8-12 months, according to Shouvik Bhattacharyya, chief executive officer, Adea Technologies.

“US companies are looking at China as a better option than India. The cost involved in providing lower-end work like testing, services etc is much cheaper in China than in India. Further, they feel China will stay longer in this field,” opined Bhattacharyya.

“For lower-end work, there is not much of communication involved unlike development and system integration work. Communication won’t be a big challenge,” he added.

Speaking about domestic market, Bhattacharyya said that the company is focusing on the retail, infrastructure and government verticals. The company is also highly focused on these verticals on a global scale.

“We have provided ‘Govtax’ solution to the US government and we have expertise in handling the public sector. We are in talks with state governments in India, so we can customize it for the Indian market,” informed Bhattacharyya.

Bhattacharyya said the company perceives huge opportunity in the Indian retail market, which is pegged at $200 billion by KPMG.

Adea derives 50 per cent of its revenue from IT services and 25 per cent from SAP services and the rest from others.

It recently launched ‘Ocelli’ solution. Powered with Google search, it is the first SAP product that enables businesses to search and report SAP data in a simple framework.

“Apart from this SAP product, the company is also investing more towards development of indigenous products especially for retail and government vertical,” said Bhattacharyya.

Eye on acquisitions

Last year Adea Technologies had acquired CVR strengthening its SAP consulting services. Going ahead, the company wants to give further strength to SAP services and focus on high-end work like product development and system integration.

“In the next one year we are scouting at acquisitions in US as well as India. In the US market we will be looking at acquisitions that would strengthen retail and government verticals. In India we are looking at companies with deeper technical capabilities across SAP, JAVA or Microsoft,” he added.

“We would actually prefer companies outside Bangalore.”

He said that the CVR acquisition has doubled the revenue run rate and has become Adea’s largest business practice.

Talking about the US slowdown and its effect on mid-sized companies like Adea, he said, “Even with recession, we have higher proposition in getting deals. Our growth has not affected and we have not lost customers. In fact it has provided a good opportunity for mid-sized companies, especially in bagging small deals unlike big companies.”

The company follows what it calls the Opti-Shore model, wherein it sets up base in every geography to provide direct service to the clients, hiring local workforce.

“So we are in direct touch with our clients. This has helped to retain existing customers and also bag more deals,” stated Bhattacharyya.

The company has offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad and employs 500 staff.

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