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| SAP Labs plans 'Made in India' products |
| Pradeesh Chandran / Bangalore Feb 08, 2011, 00:47 IST |
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SAP Labs India, the research and development (R&D) arm of the German global business management solutions firm, SAP, plans to develop two global products, end-to-end, from its centre in Bangalore.
India is the second largest R&D centre of SAP and contributes to 30 per cent of its global products. SAP would, if the move succeeds, become the first multinational company in the software products sector to come out with a product that is completely a 'Made in India' one.
Several multinationals, such as Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, AMD, NetApp and EMC, have their R&D centre in India. While these centres have done much work, none have come out with a product completely developed in India for the global markets.
“We started the R&D lab in 1998. The initial focus was towards localisation and customisation of our products for the India market. Now we have reached a maturity level with skilled talent to bring out a product for the global market,” said V R Ferose, managing director of SAP Labs India.
He, however, said it was too early to give details of the products the India lab was working on. SAP has over 4,000 people in India and has commissioned a team of 20 engineers to work on these two products. “SAP is planning to come out with 15 new products. We did a major part of the development for many of products and this is an opportunity to build a product for the global market,” Ferose added.
The company is planning to showcase these two products to its employees during its internal event in March and will release these at ‘Sapphire Now’, an annual event that SAP holds in September. Ferose said, “As we are taking the total ownership of the product, it is the responsibility of the India team to generate revenues from the product. According to SAP, a product is considered a success only if it gives $10 million revenue or have a user base of 1 million.”
India has been a crucial centre for SAP. In 2005, SAP had announced an investement of $1 billion in India, which had been exhausted by the end of 2010. In 2008, the company has also allocated $30 million for its SAP Ventures. Bill McDermott, co-CEO, had during his visit to India in 2008 told Business Standard that India was the fastest-growing market in the world for SAP. “We are looking at it as a centre of innovation and co-creation of value for our clients. The real interest in India is to find the next practice. To find the unexplored innovative idea — one that can change the game. We plan to use India as an incubation engine of innovation for our entire company,” he said.
The company also feels India has a large market for mobile device solutions and the small and medium enterprises sector and the products developed for India can be used as a global product.
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