Tatas Launch New Infotech Subsidiary

The Tata group yesterday launched a new information technology company, Tata Technologies (India) Ltd (TTIL). The company will be a 100 per cent subsidiary of Telco and will specialise in offering IT solutions to engineering and manufacturing firms.

Tata Technologies will offer services like business process re-engineering and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to companies. ERP integrates all IT operations in the company and is crucial to co-ordinated functioning.

SAP (Systems, Applications and Products) of Germany, the number one ERP company in the world, will partner TTIL for this purpose. Other business partners will include Tata Information Systems Ltd (TISL), Tata Elxsi and US-based Concentra Corporation.

TTIL is the sixth Tata company in information technology. Others are Tata Information Systems Ltd (TISL), the IBM joint venture, Tata Elxsi, Tata Infotech Ltd, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and the new company formed recently by hiving off TISL's software division.

Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata hinted that all the Tata infotech companies may work as one cohesive unit at a later date.

"Their consolidation is very difficult because their structures are different. The first step is to make them work together in synergy and then make it possible physically," he said.

TTIL will be based in Pune and supported by IT professionals experienced in developing and implementing systems for Telco's manufacturing, corporate and sales offices, Tata said.

Tata Information Systems, a 50:50 a joint venture between the Tatas and IBM, will provide AS/400 systems for the competence centre to be set up by the company and partner it for systems integration.

Concentra Corporation and Lotus Engineering will jointly assist TTIL in developing the integrated car engineer software, which allows a vehicle to be designed from initial sketches. The resources of the Rs 100-crore Computer Aided Design centre of Telco will also be made available for this.

The new company will have 500 personnel, 200 CAD/CAM engineers and 300 consultants, software developers and systems integration engineers. The actual investment figures are, however, still being worked out, Ratan Tata said. S D Pradhan, earlier with Telco, will be executive director of the company. He is also on the board of Tata Technologies Pte Ltd, Singapore, Tata Technologies Sdn Bhd, Malaysia, and Tata Technologies Inc, Nevada--all partly owned by the Tatas.

These companies will help in marketing TTIL's services outside the country.

Tata Technologies Pte Ltd was established in association with Telco in 1994. Its clients include Merck, Motorala Pager Division, EDS International and Bell Sygma among others.