E-governance projects high on SAP biz plan

SAP, the Germany-based enterprise software product company, aims to localise to strengthen presence in India. It hopes a significant part of its growth in India would come from the government sector, with the thrust on e-governance initiatives.

“India is the fastest growing region for us globally this year and continues to remain strong, despite the global uncertainties. We will continue to make investments in India to add local relevance to our products and software,” said SAP India’s chief operating officer.

SAP India recently launched the Hindi version of its software. It plans to add more native Indian languages to the list. The company is also making changes in its enterprise software, keeping in mind the long and complex procurement processes followed by government agencies in India. The company feels the changes are required, as the government has started making huge investments in information technology (IT) procurement.

“The increase in IT spending by the government is a huge opportunity for us. Every district now has the mandate from the government that they will have to automate and streamline some of the basic citizen service processes. Even during downturns that spend continues,” added Goyal.

He said public sector and small and medium businesses would be huge growth drivers this year. While he declined to share growth figures for India, he said it was higher than the growth of any other region for SAP AG, the parent company.

SAP India is also planning to expand its presence. “We have altogether 5,500 people in India, which houses our second largest development centre outside of Germany. It is also headquarters of our global delivery centre. We are planning to add more people in our team,” said Goyal. It plans to expand the network of its partners. It has about 200 in India.

SAP India is helping one of its partners develop a helpline mobile application aimed at helping Indians with critical alerts during emergencies. In an emergency, a citizen’s details can be sent out to a helpline by pressing a designated ‘hot button’, Goyal added.