AppLabs high on performance testing market in India

Applabs, which has testing facilities in Hyderabad, US and Europe, would compete with tier-I players like Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant. The addressable market for software testing services is pegged at $160 billion globally, of which services worth $10 billion are expected to be outsourced from India.

"Volumes of business from the US and UK markets have always been attractive, with both the geographies contributing 50 per cent each to our revenues. However, we want to give a big push in India starting this year and our approach to the domestic market would be to target the Top 100 business houses across all verticals.

We expect to clinch around 10 customers from India in the next 12 months, garnering revenues of between $2 million (Rs 8 crore) and $3 million (Rs 12 crore)," Makarand Teje (Mak), president and chief executive officer of AppLabs, told Business Standard.

With more companies seeing testing as something that can be easily outsourceable, Mak said AppLabs would be adding around 600 offshore jobs during this year to cash in on the demand.

The company currently employs 2,000, of which nearly 1,600 work out of its Hyderabad development centre.

Stating that there is a newer demand for test process consulting (TPC), which gives the ability to go into an organisation and define the problem before implementing a process-centric solution, he said the company was looking at tapping opportunities in Germany and France.

Turquoise, a multi-lateral trading facility established by nine European investment banks, had recently partnered AppLabs to deliver a testing programme, which will verify and ensure that the trading platform is fit for the purpose.

"We are currently in the prototype testing stage and the equity trading platform would be launched by October 2008," Mak said.

Buoyed by its increasing focus on the existing 80 active clients and 600-odd customers, and the opportunities that it sees from India for performance testing,

AppLabs expects its revenues to touch $130 million (approximately Rs 520 crore) during the current financial year, as against $100 million (Rs 400 crore) last year.