Neilsoft to have engineering development centre in Hubli

The Pune-based engineering technology services and solutions provider, Neilsoft, is setting up an engineering development centre in Hubli.

The company, which provides engineering services to construction, industrial machinery, software and transportation sectors, will recruit 100 engineers from Hubli and Dharwad for the centre over the next 18 months.

"We were looking at a smaller town for our expansion and Hubli attracted our attention due to the availability of engineering talent there. It will help us expand at a lower cost as compared to bigger cities. This will be our first centre outside Pune and we will invest close to Rs 10 crore over the next 18 months," Neilsoft managing director Ketan Bakshi told Business Standard.

He said that plan to set up a centre in Hubli is part of the company's efforts to grow 10 times in the next six years from its present strength of 550 engineers based in Pune. The short term goal of the major expansion plan is to expand its capacity to over 1,000 seats in the next 18 months, he said.

"The engineering services outsourcing industry is at an inflection point and is experiencing over 40 per cent growth (CAGR) over the last two years. To ride the growth wave (momentum), we have evolved a scaleability framework and drawn up the blueprint for rapid growth in the next six years," Bakshi said.

The company, which reported an operating profit of Rs 9 crore over a turnover of Rs 40 crore in 2005-06, aims to achieve Rs 68 crore turnover this year. Neilsoft's services include a breadth of CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM related engineering services and software product engineering services.

Neilsoft has raised venture capital from Ahmedabad-based VC fund GVSL and Sicom, a Maharashtra government-owned financial institution, who have invested Rs 3.2 crore and Rs 2.2 crore respectively.

The company?s clientele include Autodesk and Skanska. Its key offerings in engineering services and solutions are in the areas of construction engineering, design, analysis and detailed engineering services for building systems and industrial plants in multiple disciplines including structural (precast, RCC, steel). The company also has a software product for engineering services.

Bakshi said, "Though companies around the world are looking at tapping into India?s advantage in offshoring engineering services, access to cheap labor alone cannot be a sustainable business model over the long term. The engineering technology (ET) services space has its own challenges of scaleability and has characteristics that are distinctly different from the IT services space. Hence, the specialist engineering services vendors have a unique opportunity to differentiate themselves from the IT model and scale to become major ET players."

Neilsoft has offices in Michigan in USA, Cambridge UK, Chicago USA and Dalian in China to cater to the engineering needs of some of the Fortune 2000 companies.