Magic Software plans to up India presence

Magic Software Enterprises, an Israel-based company that provides business integration and development tools, plans to increase its presence in India by realigning its operations.

The Nasdaq-listed Magic is part of the $2 billion Formula Group. Magic's unique selling proposition lies in its tools which are not bound by any language such as .Net or Java.

Irrespective of what the client has installed, these tools enable developers by bridging architectures. The company's huge list of customers is proof to the fact that its tools are independent of platforms or developers.

Currently Magic has a research and development centre in Pune, where it employs 80 people. This centre also plays a key role for providing worldwide support to Magic's products.

"India represents a key growth market for Magic Software. Besides sales and marketing, we are also investing heavily on growing our developer community," said Meir Koren, regional sales manager of Asia Pacific, Magic Software.

The company has two products in its portfolio for the Indian market, eDeveloper for application development and iBolt for business integration. These products provide features and functionality that can directly translate into tangible business benefits.

According to Koren, "We plan to have about 50 iBolt Partners and 150 eDevelopers by 2007. Unlike in Java, our tools do not require a huge developer community for providing applications. But we will work towards bringing in more awareness among developers."

Magic Software already has over 1,000 customers in India using the eDeveloper environment to build business applications.

These include Hero Motorcycles, Bank of Maharashtra, Central Bank of India and the Himalaya Drug Company among others.

Interestingly, a study conducted by Magic on the Indian market indicates that the developer tools sector was about $300 million, while the size of the enterprise application interface (EAI) space is about $1 billion.

"Since we are entering the EAI and business process management space, we will work towards capturing at least five per cent of this market by 2007," Koren added.

For the full year ended December 31, 2003, Magic reported total revenues of $63.39 million, an increase of 6 per cent when compared to the previous year.

For the same period, it registered a net profit of $3.07 million as compared with a net loss of $5.66 million in the previous year.

Europe accounted for 39 per cent of the company's revenues, while North America and Asia-Pacific accounted for 33 per cent and 28 per cent, respectively.