DX Technologies to focus on e-publishing

PUNE: Pune-based Digital Publishing Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (DPSPL), which had

closed shop earlier this month removing over 900 odd employees has formed a new

company called DX Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

The new company will focus on the e-publishing market with its DX Publishing

Suite for content management, distribution, commerce and DX Enterprise for high

volume and high quality content production.

DX Technologies CEO, Richard Pipe said that DPSPL was forced to opt for

liquidation because cash had dried up. The company formerly known as Versaware

Technologies India was a 100 per cent subsidiary of Versaware Inc., USA. It was

bought out DPSPL Hong Kong when Versaware Inc closed its Israeli, US and Indian

operations after the NASDAQ crash.

DPSPL India was purchased outright along with intellectual property rights

with investments from Harry Fox for $ 1 million. Pipe said that DPS had

inherited a large debt from Versaware to the tune of $ 400,000. According to

him, the burden debt had reached trigger point.

Retrenching or down-sizing was not the solution since the liabilities had

gone upto $ 700,000 by December 2001. The cost of liquidation was the same as

operating expenses for a month and therefore the company decided to go in for

liquidation. More than 936 employees lost their jobs due to the closure.

However, Pipe was confident that they would be in a position to take in at least

500 employees by March this year.

DPS Hong Kong will own DX Technologies Pvt. Ltd. DX Technologies, the

technological development arm of DPSPL, will use the production base of Digital

Publishing Solutions. Pipe said that they had hit upon DX Technologies as a

suitable brand name since it was the technological arm of the former company.

Pipe said, "It has to be understood that the need to liquidate as forced

by a cash-flow gap that could not be sustained for even another day. This cash

flow gap was caused due to the debt burden carried over from Versaware.

Singhania and Partners have been appointed as liquidators. DPS has a total debt

of $ 800,000 with debt open for negotiation.

The new company will focus on the development of technology and making this

available through licensing. Pipe said that they would offer the entire

production system on license to qualified business partners to address the

expanding market. `` Licensing our technology to production partners will give

us tremendous opportunity as we acquire new customers and expand globally,'' he

said. The DX Enterprise license is a scalable package that contains everything

required for a very quick start on the top shelf of the content sector of the IT

enabled industry.

Pipe projected revenues to the tune of $ 7 million for March 2002-2003,

adding that 30 per cent of these would come from software sales. The balance

would come from the services. The company has funds to see them through for at

least six months. Pipe expected profitability by February 2002.