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Zensar to rebuild management team

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CIOL Bureau
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PUNE: Nearly a fortnight after taking charge at Zensar Technologies, Ganesh

Natarajan is now in the process of taking stock of the situation and is working

towards `rebuilding the management team’ at Zensar.

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Zensar Technologies — an RPG group company engaged in software solution, is

the world’s first enterprise-wide SEI CMM Level 5 Company with lines of

business covering areas of retail, telecom and financial services.

"The goal is to ramp it up, make it a truly world class

organization," he said. Natarajan’s sudden move to shift to Zensar had

raised many an eyebrow in corporate circles. On his decision to quite Aptech,

Natarajan maintained that he quite liked the idea of challenges. "My

capabilities lie in building teams and expanding markets," he said,

speaking to media persons for the first time after taking charge at Zensar.

Natarajan seemed unaffected by the slowdown in the US economy and believed

that their company’s strong offshore model based on a direct relationship with

the clients would ensure `business as usual’. "It is the body shoppers

that are getting wiped out. With a model like ours, it should not be very

difficult to ensure growth," he maintained.

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Although Zensar would be focusing on Japan and Europe in a big way, Natarajan

said that this in no way would affect their US operations. Denying any possible

impact of the US slowdown on the company, he revealed plans of opening another

three offices in addition to the existing five offices here. "It will be

tougher though getting business because of the Indian flag," he remarked. V

V Chellappa, who has 25 years of professional experience with Zensar has been

appointed CEO of the North American operations. The US client list of Zensar

includes Sprint, Fujitsu and Cisco among major corporations.

The corporate strategy of Zensar is built around three lines of technology

— Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. Embedded software and mobile computing are recent

additions in the areas of expertise. Zensar has also built domain expertise in

three areas including retail, telecom and financial services. In the area of

embedded software, the company has taken on an assignment with a South African

company.

Zensar will be focusing on Japan in a big way. Over the last 5 years, the

company completed several projects in Japan and has over 30 Japanese

professionals in both technical and non-technical areas. The goal is to expand

their network in Japan and increase the number of Japanese speaking engineers.

While Natarajan did not rule out acquisitions as a way to grow, he maintained

that they did not have any acquisition strategy in place yet. "We will be

entering into the financial sector in the next three to four months," chief

operating officer, Sunil Kunte, said. On the proposed merger between Zensar ICIM,

Natarajan said that both the boards had filed the applications and the name

Fujitsu would cease to exist after the merger. Once the merger between Zensar

ICIM takes place, RPG and ICL Plc will hold 30 per cent each in the company.

Electra Partners who invested in Zensar in 1997 will hold 22 per cent and the

public the remaining 18 per cent.

Another four offshore development centers will be in place during the next

financial year. This would include centers at Mumbai, Delhi and a fourth center

at Pune that would hold 900 software professionals. The center will be

operational in a span of 18 months. Zensar currently has six full- fledged off

shore development centers.

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