Polaris eyes $100 mn revenue by 2016

CHENNAI, INDIA: Financial technology company Polaris Software Lab Ltd. hopes to earn $100 million in five years by offering its core banking solution (CBS) and other software on a cloud computing basis, said a company official on Tuesday.

“By 2016 the revenue from our Intellect range of financial sector software products offered on cloud computing basis will be $100 million. We have invested around Rs 100 crore for this offering.” chairman and CEO Arun Jain told reporters here.

Launching the company's financial technology (FT) grid, the largest cloud computing offering with a capacity to cater to 100 million customers, Jain said, Polaris has invested around Rs 400 crore over the past couple of years on its Intellect range of software solutions.

“We have branded this offering as 'Grid' to match our vision of making banking services available as ubiquitously as electricity is available over a power grid today,” Jain added.

He said the company will be targeting new private and foreign banks and cooperative banks with its new service offering.

“One rupee per customer per week is what we promise as the cost that our customer would incur by opting for our new offering,” Jain said.

Terming the new service as 'satchet banking', Jaideep Billa, executive vice president, said the company was looking at three different market segments with its cloud computing offering.

He said the low-cost CBS will be for global banks in developing economies such as India, Bangladesh, African countries and Vietnam.

“One of its unique features is that the solutions comes in various Indian regional languages,” Billa said.

Polaris also offers a solution for capital markets (wealth management, mutual funds, brokerage services and risk and treasury applications) for maturing markets in Europe and a corporate banking solution for markets like the US, Canada and Australia.

Andhra Pradesh State Co-Operative Bank has started using the CBS on cloud computing basis.

“We are talking to a cooperative bank in Kerala and a financial institution in the US for our capital market solution,” Jain said.

Polaris' US-based subsidiary IdenTrust will take care of the network security. IdenTrust provides applications that use electronic identities that establish contracts, grant authority, support secure encrypted data and information storage and secure online transactions.