HCC hives off IT division into new unit

MUMBAI, INDIA: Hindustan Construction Co (HCC) has hived off its IT division into a separate firm, Highbar Technologies, to provide services to clients in the infrastructure sector, a top official said on Thursday.

During the past years, this IT arm has been responsible for fulfilling the company's IT requirements as well as software implementations such as ERP, reinforcement steel optimization among others.

"Our endeavour is to provide end-to-end IT services. Today, we have started with packaged software like SAP's ERP and other ERP solutions, and we have some specialised solutions for the infrastructure industry," Highbar Technologies President Satish Pendse told Reuters over phone.

SAP AG is a German company developing enterprise resource planning software. Apart from SAP, HP is among the key partners of Highbar Technologies and the company is also working with Wipro for the development of Lavasa hill-city project located about 65 kilometers from Pune.

Highbar Technologies would also look at expanding to the Middle East and Europe, Pendse said.

At present, the Indian market for infrastructure-IT segment is around 20 billion rupees and expected to grow to 30 billion rupees in five years, he said.

About the company's business future strategy, Pendse said, “Focus is on infrastructure and construction which includes roads, bridges, ports and buildings. The market size is estimated around Rs.2000 crore and is expected to reach Rs.3000 crore by the year end, which shows big business opportunities in the sector.”

"Our endevour is to gain as much pie of that as possible," he said, without putting a figure to revenues expected.

HCC has been providing IT services since the last 18-20 months and has 27 customers, he said.

At present, Highbar Technologies has a staff strength of 125, which according to Pendse will be increased to 1000 in the next five years. It has about 27 customers, of which one is in Dubai and rest in India.

In the past large enterprises such Larsen & Toubro (L&T) ventured into the tech sector by forming L&T Infotech, while the National Stock Exchange (NSE)  formed NSE IT. The industry had also seen the private sector banking and financial firm, ICICI Bank, expanding its internal IT captive into 3i Infotech.

(With input from Reuters)