Training helps Softbridge tap Japanese market

PUNE: While many Indian IT companies cited language and culture barriers preventing them from successfully entering the IT market in Japan, Softbridge Solutions has found a way in and has raked in a revenue of $2.5 million in its third year.

The company, with bases in Pune, Singapore and Tokyo is an example of the growing Indo-Japanese business partnership.

India's IT exports to Japan is 3 per cent compared with over 60 per cent to the US. While the language and culture of Japan were pointed out as hurdles, technocrats at Softbridge saw an opportunity to do business with the land of the rising sun.

To tap the second largest IT market in the world after the US, Softbridge banked on a bi-directional training program aimed at building bridges between languages and cultures. Indian engineers with the company learned Japanese language and culture. Simultaneously, Japanese companies picked up English, other cultures and IT.

This helped Japan and India to overcome business barriers, which resulted in revenues to the tune of $2.5 million for Softbridge.

"In the past two years we have groomed over 60 software engineers in Japanese language and culture presently deployed on-site at various Japanese IT companies and we have another 35 engineers presently undergoing training in Pune," Prashant Devatraj, founder director of Softbridge told media persons here.

He added that Softbridge had realized the potential of the Japanese IT market four years ago and saw business synergy between India's IT talent and requirements of Japan.

"Our India-2-Japan (I2J) and Japan-2-India (J2I) programs, which cover all aspects of technical, local methodology, language and cultural exchange have been by our Japanese clients, which include companies like Toshiba, Toppan, Hitachi, Sanyo, Yokogawa and many others,” he said at the commencement of the new batch of the I2J program."

Prashant Jain, president & CEO said Softbridge's mission is to be the lead player in Japanese market and to promote 'brand India' as the most preferred training and off shoring destination for Japan.

"This will enable Indian IT industry to look beyond European and US markets and make foray into the world's second largest market,” he added.