Oracle India MD 'khush hua'!

A year is a peculiar landmark. The time period is used to judge an employee's performance, to understand his/her potential and speculate on the future. Yet, annual performance is not the best benchmark and often the employee is given the 'benefit of doubt'. Almost everyone across the world is judged on 'the completion of one year' parameter, be it a country's premier or a company's managing director.





Krishan Dhawan, managing director, Oracle, recently completed one year at Oracle. He had taken over from Shekhar Dasgupta who is accredited for establishing Oracle's presence in India. Dhawan was a banker with Bank of America for 23 years, subsequently the CMO at EXL Service (India) before taking up reins at Oracle.





A lot of data has flown under Oracle India's bridge in the past year, from high profile takeovers and mergers to focused interest on e-governance space. Shashwat Chaturvedi of Cyber Media News caught up Dhawan and asked him to perform a self-appraisal, which he sums up as "immensely satisfying". Excerpts:





How has been the past year at the helm of Oracle India, what all has changed?







First, how I measure time has changed. Instead of a year, now I measure it as four quarters. So, I have completed four quarters at Oracle. It has been a good eventful period both from the company's and my own personal perspective.

A lot of M&A activities were undertaken in this time frame (acquisition of Siebel, etc.). We have also significantly expanded the product and service offering and thereby grown the installed base in India. But what gives me great pleasure, is how well our economy is doing, it is unprecedented. Everyone seems to be buoyant and has so much hope and confidence about the future. Coming back to Oracle, we are very optimistic about the future and have lot in store for the next two years. In fact, a lot of my time goes in planning for the future.






What would you term as the 'happy moments' in this time-period?







One thing that gives me immense pleasure is the sustained progress on the e-governance space. With every policy pronouncement, for instance the latest budget, the commitment by the government has been underlined. That is indeed heartening as e-governance has the potential of empowering millions in this nation. Also, I am excited on the shift of perception on India's global role. India is importantly being seen as an important market of the future, historically India has made a major impact as a development center. While that is still true, the shift to an important market is quite an achievement.





What are Oracle's latest initiatives in India?







There are a lot of initiatives. Launch of sales office in nine new cities, in fact we have located five new ones in the last two months. It is a part of our expansion strategy, we are moving away from metros to non-metros or Tier II and III cities. We have also started a new business line, called as embedded technologies, wherein we will be selling our technology to the OEMs, the intention is to work with them to develop and fine-tune our product offerings.





There is often the talk about increasing skill-gap in India; Oracle has been working in its own small way to contribute to the nation's development. Oracle Education is supporting more than 150 tertiary institutes in India, with grants close to $250 million over the years. Oracle is also offering students and small businesses its database-DB Express for free, it can be downloaded from the Internet.





How is the market shaping up and what are the overall trends?







Overall, as I said earlier, there is a lot of confidence in the air. Several developments are happening at different planes. A lot of action is happening in the automobile sector, they are making significant investment in IT infrastructure. Human Resource Management (HRM) is an emerging trend in India. Compliance issues are also driving up a lot of IT adoption. SMB is gradually emerging as important market force.