COMPUAGE FORAYS INTO SOFTWARE: To distribute Compaq PCs, opts out of AMD ambit

Compuage Infocom Ltd (CIL) has

acquired an Indian-owned, New York-based software firm, Informatics Systems Inc

(ISI) by buying 76 percent of the company's stake. The company billed $2.4

million during 2000. Atul Mehta, CMD, was not willing to divulge the amount of

investment from CIL's side. 

ISI has 34 engineers on its roll

and has skill-sets in Java, Oracle and Sybase. To complement the work that ISI

is doing in the US, Compuage is working on its software facility at Andheri,

Mumbai, which will house 20 engineers to start off and have 60 professionals by

the end of the financial year. The software facility is expected to become

functional in the next 30 days.

CIL plans to establish marketing

offices in Singapore and London in the near future to bag the right kind of

software projects. Atul agreed to the fact that CIL was entering the software

segment at a time when market had slowed down. "Ours is a small company and

our risks are evenly balanced," he pointed out.

Meanwhile, CIL is going strong

on the distribution front. It has signed up with Compaq to sell its PCs in the

western region. At the same time, CIL has opted out of being a master reseller

of AMD. Opines Atul, "We were not sure of AMD's product reliability since

we received failure reports from the market. AMD need to do a lot of market

development work."

Atul says that CIL will go

online from 1st of July. The company is waiting for leased line connection and

installation of hardware. Training has been completed on MFGPro. The total

investment on ERP installation would be to the tune of Rs 1.5 crore.

CIL has achieved a turnover of

Rs 240 crore for 2000-01 with a 50 percent growth over Rs 160 crore of previous

year. Atul is confident that this rate of growth would be maintained even this

year as he aims for a turnover of Rs 360 crore.