SunGard plans entry into higher education sector

SunGard Technology Services President Mack Gill said this during his Pune visit on Wednesday. Speaking to reporters, Gill said, "We are leaders in financial services, public sector and higer education across the world and it's time to acquire major clients in India.

The higher education is the fastest growing segment for us and more than 1,600 universities and colleges are using our system the way any company uses an ERP tool. With Indian universities building a strong global brand, we will promote our higer education tools within this sector."

 

The company has already held talks with some of the key Indian universities and institutions that have global recognition. The higher education tool developed by SunGard helps universities in admission process, recruitment, back-end support, academic content development as well as in fund raising activities. "We expect to have some installations before the next academic year in 2009," he stated.

Sungard presently has 1,700 employees in Pune and Bangalore jointly. It wants to increase this number to 2,000 by December. "Almost 90 per of our products are worked on in India centres and more than 40 per cent of research and development work happens from India for us. Considering this, we are now developing India as hub to promote sales within asia and West Asian region," he added. The company already has 20 clients in India including HDFC, L&T, Kotak Mahindra and others.

It also plans a major foray into sectors such as wealth management, asset management, insurance and brokerage, he added.