"While the global PLM market grew at 8%, in 2003, UGS' growth rate was 39%, and this year it has increased to 54% worldwide"

UGS, a solution major of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) considers India
its fastest growing market in the APac region. Narendar Reddy is euphoric about
this fact and tells DQCI that the company plans to add 100 more people at its
Pune Development Center within 2005.

How important is India for UGS' business?

India is the fastest growing market for us in the entire APac region and
have the highest marketshare. We opened our product development center at Pune
in 1999. Apart from that, we also have a PLM Competency Center in Bangalore.
Estimated figures show that the market is $35 million in India. We have 40% of
the total market with over 1,500 customers in India.

How is PLM business moving for UGS globally?

Narendar Reddy

The trend to deploy PLM is definitely catching up. People are realizing the
difference between Computer Aided Designs (CAD) and PLM. From a global
perspective, the PLM market is growing at the rate of 8%. As far as our company's
performance is concerned, in 2003, the growth rate was 39%, whereas in 2004 we
grew to 54% globally.

What business verticals are you focusing on in India?

In India, UGS focuses on automotive industry, aerospace, defense, space,
engineering services, education and other manufacturing organizations.

What percentage of your total business is done by the channel?

Almost 50% of our business comes from the channel. We have seven business
partners working in almost every region of India-TCS, Tata Elxsi, Siemens,
Design Tech, Raysult, iBuilt and MPower. However, we are constantly looking for
more partners who can explore newer destinations for our business.

What channel strategy has UGS adopted?

We believe that effective channel partnerships are critical to address our
customer requirements comprehensively. We have a mixed mode of operations in
India, where few large enterprise and global accounts are serviced by us
directly, and the rest of the market is addressed through our channel. We are
therefore constantly engaged in equipping our partners with the best tools and
technologies to address the Indian market, both from the sales as well as the
post sales-support perspective.

What plans and strategies will you adopt to expand into the Indian market?

We plan to add about 100 more people at our Pune Development Center.
Currently, our Indian team has over 650 people, including 300 professionals at
Pune. We are also opening up a service support division in 2005, which will have
50 to 100 people. This center focuses on the development of world-class PLM
product suites like Teamcenter and NX, as an important arm of our worldwide
development organization.

UGS was to introduce a users' certification program. What is its status?

Yes, UGS is starting a certification program for its users, which will
provide them with a more organized structure. This will give another boost to
our company's business. A soft launch for this certification program has
already been done. But we will formally introduce it next year.

Do you have any specific expansion plans for your newly launched NX
version for the Indian market?

The latest release of NX, i.e the NX3, goes beyond just another CAD release.
It is a next generation solution for transforming digital product development
processes. It goes beyond individual and departmental productivity to improve
efficiency in the overall process and at each step of the process. NX therefore
provides us with tremendous opportunity to go to the market, be it existing
customers, companies using competitive products or new organizations looking at
deploying CAD systems afresh with an extended value proposition.

Our sales team and channel have over the years successfully communicated the
benefits that CAD, CAM and CAE solutions can provide in the product development
processes. They need to evangelize the role NX can play in helping organizations
with their business process initiatives like Six Sigma.

We equip them with the skills required to do that. Our channel is
strengthened so that the extended value of products like NX3 can reach the
Indian customers effectively.

FAIZ ASKARI