Print Software Firm Adobe Gets Nod For Unit

The US-based Adobe Systems Incorporated, the worlds leading printing software company and the developer of packages like Pagemaker and Photoshop, is eyeing a number of smaller Indian companies to fuel its growth plans in the country. Adobe recently received government approval for setting up a wholly-owned subsidiary Adobe Systems India Private Ltd with an investment of $3 million.

The funds will be poured into a research and development centre being set up to complement the software development work being carried out at the companys headquarters in San Jose, California. This will also be Adobes only other software development centre outside of the US and will come under the corporate engineering division.

The company has other software centres in Tokyo where it undertakes localisation of software and in Edinburgh which provides customer support.

Speaking to Business Standard Naresh Chand Gupta, managing director of Adobe Systems India Private Ltd, said the centre is expected to contribute nearly 15 to 20 per cent to Adobe Systems global engineering resources and will employ over 100 software engineers within the next two years.

The US major is trying to formulate a strategy to get the government to adopt its portable document format (PDF) technology as the standard format for creation, distribution and printing of complex documents in electronic form. The PDF technology allows the user to represent content-rich documents in the electronic form in a compact and elegant way. Moreover, it saves memory space since it allows for compression of files, especially those which contain a lot of graphical displays.

For the government, the technology will help minimise paper work, since files preserved in the portable document format can be easily distributed over networks and printed in the electronic form.

This way, all vital communication between the government and the citizens like budget information can take place in electronically. To access those files users can download the Adobe Acrobat Reader free from Adobes web site.

Acrobat is the fastest way to generate documents for distribution on the Web, corporate intranets and CD-ROMs. The US government uses the companys PDF technology as the standard format for all electronic documents its communication with the citizens. Adobe Systems Incorporated develops, supports software products to help people use information across all print and electronic media.

The company has around 97 per cent share of the market in the country. However piracy levels are as high as 95 to 99 per cent in India according to Gupta. If piracy level is brought down to 60 per cent our revenues would go up ten-fold he says.

As part of the effort to combat the piracy, Adobe is also planning to market Pagemaker, Fotoshop and Illustrator at special prices in India.