Fresh C-Dac Proposal To Set Up Company

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a supercomputing research establishment of the department of electronics, has mooted two more alternative models to the Centre for forming a separate company.

C-DAC, which made its first proposal to the Centre in 1997 for setting up C-DAC Inc by hiving off its existing business division, has proposed two alternative plans for setting up the company, following delay in receiving approval to its first proposal.

Firstly, it has proposed to form the company with 100 per cent equity to be paid by the government; alternatively, C-DAC, the government and a joint venture partner will equally find places.

The centre had earlier proposed to form the joint venture company in equity tie-up with ICICI Ltd. The first proposal called for an equity shareholding of 51:40:9 between C-DAC, ICICI and the rest with other institutions.

"All three models are under government consideration. We expect some positive response soon," a C-DAC official said.

The idea of forming C-DAC Inc, was first mooted for hiving off the centre's business division to make it more effective as an independent organisation.

The centre, which is a R&D centre for developing indigenous parallel processing in supercomputing, had wanted to hive off its business division for marketing of its products including Param supercomputer series in India and abroad. It also wanted a partner to meet the finance.

The centre denied that the delay in forming the company has put a spike on its plans to market its supercomputer series, in the face of stiff competition from companies like Cray Supercomputers, Silicon Graphics and IBM. While Silicon Graphics' income in India has grown to Rs 85 crore, C-DAC's total earning during 1997-98 was only Rs 20 crore.

It also denied that the recent US sanction on import of high performance computers into India has stalled its projects.

To face off competition effectively, the centre is now working on three areas: building high performance computing; developing local language software solutions and training.

According to sources, the centre is now working on making its Param computers capable of multiple applications like seismic data processing, geometrics and data warehousing. The centre plans to focus on developing countries and also Russia for selling its supercomputers.

C-DAC is also working with the Andhra Pradesh government for introducing `electronic governance' in the state. The centre has supplied two Param computers to AP. This will be used to manage multi-purpose household data.