Apara treading on the growth path

BANGALORE: Apara Enterprise Solutions has sketched out ambitious but sensible growth plans and is well on the road to achieve them. The current objective of the company is to cross the Rs 200 crore mark in revenue by the year 2005. Currently the company is on course to post a revenue of Rs 100 crore for the fiscal 2003-04, promising a 50 percent growth for the two consecutive years.

Growth initiatives include both organic and inorganic. Part of the inorganic growth include acquisitions, as the company has identified a possible acquisition during this quarter. Refusing to divulge any further information on the buy, Apara’s Managing Director, MS Sidhu, commented, "The customers are the key, acquisitions would bring in presence for the company across geographies."

The company presently has offices across India with its head quarters in Bangalore and branch offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata.






Apart from acquisitions, Apara is also inking new initiatives and alliances. The company’s new chairman, Kumar Malavalli’s storage for the masses initiative has made Apara as one of the two Indian companies in its `Ecosystem for Storage’. The Brocade founder has announced an investment of $two million in the Bangalore based company. Messaging services and billing applications are other initiatives that the company has been seriously considering.





"New initiatives and alliances would help supplement our growth. These partnerships would be driven independently at the same time, complementing each other," added Sidhu.

To cater to the business demand the company is adding to its employee strength. Presently it has about 125 people, growing from the 60 odd team last year. It expects to grow up to 300 strong developers by 2005. "We have always been recruiting based on our demand and need. The addition would include the employees that we will be retaining from the companies that we acquire," added Sidhu.

An investment of Rs 15 crore has been earmarked by the company for its growth plans. This amount is to be raised from internal accruals and investors. It also includes the $2 million investment that the company’s chairman has pumped in.