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Ariba on an `overdrive' in India

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: Spend management solutions provider, Ariba Inc., is ‘moving it overdrive’ in its Indian operations according to the visiting Vice President of International Development of the company, Jeff Chang. "India is a very strategic part of Ariba and the next 18 months would prove it all," promised Chang.



The two and half year old Indian development center of the company in the city of Bangalore is poised to scale up to 150 people from its present strength of 50 in the next one and half years. The hiring in India would be the largest in comparison to its primary development center in the Silicon Valley, where it has about 250 people. It has a couple of localization centers in Dublin and Tokyo with 15 to 20 employees put together.



On the investment front, "The development center in India is being considered as a cost center for the company. Every year about Rs five crore is spent for the Indian operations. This is likely to go up with the proposed ramping up," said Raman Seshadri, Director, Finance, Ariba Technologies India, Pvt Ltd. The spend for the Indian operations was Rs 2.5 crore a year back.



The latest version of company’s flagship product, Buyer is being developed in India and is slated for release for 2004. The present version in the market is Version 8.1 and the next is Version 8.2. Another popular product, Ariba Supplier Network is also being developed from India.



Churning $236.7 million in revenue, recorded during the last fiscal, Ariba is also planning to set up a platform team in India sometime next month. It has about 40 people in the Silicon Valley center and plans to develop components for the platform in India.



Coming off a rough patch following the economic recession, Ariba has crawled back to gap profitability in the last quarter after it did some restructuring in its business. It has also extended its Enterprise Spend Management solution offerings to the entire spectrum. This comprises identifying opportunites, developing strategy, sourcing and negotiating, implementing contracts and executing, invoicing and paying and finally monitoring and managing.

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