SunGard strengthens India operations

MUMBAI, INDIA: SunGard, a software and IT services company, has expanded its financial systems (FS) operations in India. The company appointed Atul Sareen as the new managing director of Sales for its financial systems business and will be adding sales and business development staffs for its Mumbai office.

According to SunGard's COO and country head (India) – Technology Services, Akila Krishnakumar, the company has been in India since 1993 and started with 300 people. Later it set up its Global Solution Centers (GSC) in Bangalore and Pune. Today, the company's total head count is about 2,400 and with the expansion plan it would reach up to 3000 this year.

“We had done a research study of the financial businesses in India last year and subsequently we planned to expand our financial systems business here. The Mumbai office will help SunGard's financial systems business enhance its support and implementation services for Indian customers that include banks and insurance companies,” said Akila Krishnakumar.

“Looking at our business and customer needs we will continue to invest pragmatically in the areas of innovations and development,” she added.

She also said SunGard was looking for an acquisition in India but but did not divulge any further details.

Commenting on his appointment, Atul Sareen said, “Business applications is the primary areas where organizations run their businesses and drive the growth. And, SunGard is present in that areas of business applications that helps business continuity and business processing,”

Presently, the 5.6 US billion dollar company has about 20-odd customers from the BFSI space in India, while the local research and development team contributes 40 per cent to the company's global innovations.

It is targeting vertical such as banks, insurance, capital market and trading, asset and wealth management, along higher education and energy sector. Tata Power is one of the customers, which has implemented SunGard's energy trading solution.

Further, Sareen, on the India business strategy, explained that the sales and pre-sale team will directly approach large customers and will also look at service providers and system integrators for catering specific solutions to customers.

According to him, the company will look at alternative business models such as software licensing, application service provider (ASP) as well as software-as-a-service (SaaS) for Indian market.

“Our business models for each of our business solutions are different depending on the requirements of that particular industry verticals and the customers,” commented Andrew Bateman, SunGard's COO, Asia Pacific.