IT product for customs clearance soon

Four Soft Ltd, a Hyderabad-based provider of logistic and supply chain management software products, plans to launch its customs clearance solution - 4S-eCustoms - as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product in India and parts of Europe in the fourth quarter of the present financial year.

"The product has been deployed at Babaji Shivram, a Mumbai-based customs clearance company, on a pilot basis. We are presently working on the pricing details, and expect a roll out in India, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in January 2008," Srikanth Palem, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Four Soft, told Business Standard.

The launch of the product marks Four Soft's foray into the SaaS market, and would make it the first company to introduce a 'pay-per-use' product specifically designed for customs clearance.

Four Soft commenced development of 4S-eCustoms in November 2005. The market for on-demand customs clearance solutions in India is estimated to be Rs 50 crore.

4S-eCustoms is a product that will accelerate the import and export clearance of cargo in major geographic locations. Customs clearance of major countries will be available on one web-based system having the capability to handle the operations, automate interaction with various government customs agencies and ensure compliance.

According to Palem, the company is focussing on strengthening its presence in the Japan market to cash in on the low competition there.

"We had opened our regional office in Japan during the end of last year to build a huge pipeline of customers in the region. We have already submitted five business proposals with logistic players here and expect to reap benefits from them from the next quarter," he added.

Four Soft, which has over 300 customers across 120 countries and 50,000 users in the supply chain domain, clocked revenues of Rs 150 crore during the last financial year.

The company has been registering revenues of Rs 45 crore per quarter and expects to keep the current performance level to touch Rs 180-190 crore by this fiscal end, Palem said. While 60 per cent of Four Soft's revenues flow in from Europe, the US and Asia markets account for 25 per cent and 15 per cent respectively.