Oracle logs on to Pune

Will focus more on key industries in Maharashtra

Oracle India on Wednesday announced the opening of its Pune office, the first of nine non-metro offices that the company has planned for India.

Speaking at the inauguration of the centre Krishnan Dhawan, managing director, Oracle India said: "The non-metro cities are seeing highest growth.

We will be opening offices in Vishakapatnam, Lucknow, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Indore, Ahmedabad, Kochi and Chandigarh shortly."

Dhawan said the centre will cater to the interiors of Maharashtra besides responding to the needs of the growing clientele in the automobile, manufacturing, heavy engineering and the IT industry locally.

With the addition of non-metro centres, Oracle will have a total of 15 sales and marketing offices across the country. The concept of reaching non-metro cities in India was spelt out by Oracle CEO Charles Philips during his visit to India last year.

Explaining the company's decision to foray into non-metro cities Dhawan said: "Pune is the first of the nine cities where we are opening our offices. We have already picked representatives for five more cities and hope to select representatives for all nine in the next four weeks."

"Within the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) we will now be targeting companies with a turnover of Rs 25 crore and above," Dhawan said.

Oracle's clients in Pune include Tata Motors, Cummins Group and Finolex.

Partners in the region include Sonata Information Technology, Ingram Micro, Rapid Effects, Spider Effects, Lauren Information Technolgies, Softcell Technologies, Fiona Infosystems Benelac Infotech and Sujata Data Products. With a 41 per cent market share in the information management space Oracle offers its customers fully integrated end-to-end solutions.

"The company already has 6,400 customers in India and a strong presence in Pune," he said, adding, "some of the company's clients in Pune are Tata Motors, Cummins Group and Finolex".

Noting that the expanded presence in the city will strenghthen the company's focus on the emerging national and global players which it so far catered to from the metros. Dhawan said, "Within the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) we will now be targeting companies with a turnover of Rs 25 crore and above."

As a part of its operations in the city, Oracle partner, Clover Technologies, present in Mumbai and Pune will offer its customers services of hosting a concept lab in its premises or at the clients for increased security reasons.

"A concept lab will allow our customers to test the process and solutions efficiency customised to their needs before deploying it. It will reduce the time for deployment as we take the fully integrated end-to-end solutions to our customers," said Shrikant Navelkar, vice-president, Clover Technologies.