BANGALORE, OCT. 6. The Bangalore-based Fusion Software, which had a modest $6 million
turnover last year, including Rs. 4.20 crores of domestic business, is now gearing up for
bigger business levels which should see its annual turnover reach $25 million by 2001.
According to the managing director, Mr. Ramesh Santhanam, the company is expecting to soon
tie-up with certain venture capital firms for an infusion of around Rs. 4-5 crores of
funds within the next six months. Once these institutional funds come in, the two domestic
entities of the group - Ramsoft Technologies and Chip - which had been started by the
promoters in the early Eighties to work on highly technical software projects in the
Defence aeronautics area, will be merged with Fusion Software. Fusion Software has recently moved into its spanking new 20,000 sft
development centre in a one-acre plot at Electronics City near Bangalore. The company also
has a 5-year-old marketing subsidiary at Neuchatel in Switzerland and another U.S.-based
front end at San Jose in California, both of which were established in the mid-Nineties.
As of now, the manpower of the company is 125 strong which is likely to double in the next
two years.
``We want to position ourselves as a company specialising in
Internet projects and product development,'' says Mr. Santhanam. `` Our unique selling
proposition will include development of value-added utilities or tools to standard
products, security protocol implementation, end-to-end software-based technology solutions
and trustmark compliant solutions which can withstand scrutiny of international auditors
such as KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers."
In the last one year, Fusion has already completed about
half-a- dozen major projects for large clients abroad involving re- engineering and
rearchitecture from legacy to Internet enabled systems as well as web-based product
development. Some interesting projects for which Fusion has been recently retained
include:
(1) Development of a web-based integrated media advertising
system for a global advertising conglomerate to fully automate the process of placing
advertisements on various selected platforms or sites.
(2) Extensive black-box testing of two modules of a popular
linguistic product suite which translates natural-language queries into the language of
the search engines on the web. The tests carried out included those for functionality,
resource use and environmental capability.
(3) Development of an Internet-based registry service for
any type of commonly used financial card (credit, debit, smart, discount and the like)
with additional features such as repository for any important information and automatic
notification/reminder services.
(4) Development of a web-based solution for scheduling and
management of documents that need to be translated. The actual translation is done using a
network of translators spread across the globe. The system has additional features such as
multi- lingual terminology database, translator registration and archives.
The future growth of Fusion Software will also be
accelerated by a novel scheme of Virtual Software Factories (VSFs) which will be run on
the build, operate and transfer model for foreign clients. About 20 software professionals
will man each one of these VSFs.
