Fujitsu eyes Indian IT market with $20mln investment in next 2 yrs

New Delhi, May 16 (UNI) Fujitsu Consulting, a US-based global IT and communications solutions provider, today announced its foray into the Indian IT market, with an initial investment of 20 million dollars in the next two years on expansion facilities.

''We will be pumping in 20 million dollars in India in setting up new buildings, expanding the existing facilities, putting up an IT and communications infrastructure, besides providing application services and solutions,'' Fujitsu Consulting US sales Executive Vice President Steve Kirchoff told reporters here.

The company had recently acquired Rapidigm India Ltd, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Rapidigm Inc, on March 31, 2006, to broaden its customer base in the country.

''Through Rapidigm, our expansion initiative will include increasing our employee base in India to 2,500 from the present 1000,'' Mr Kirchoff said.

At present Rapidigm has facilities in Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Noida, and it will now be setting up a new campus in Hyderabad while expanding its existing facilities.

''We will increase the employee capacity in our largest 8 acre facility in Pune as well as in Noida. In Pune, we have 800 people at present which we hope to ramp up to 1500, while in Noida we hope to employ 1000 people from the present 400 in the next two years,'' Mr Kirchoff said.

Services provided by Fujitsu in the Indian market will include certification of new technologies like SAP, BI, Oracle and people soft, Siebel and e-business.

Asked about the kind of competition they were looking at, Fujitsu Consulting Marketing Communications Executive Vice President Ron Mitchell said, ''Our competition comes mainly from the regional players. In India it would be the big players like TCS, Wipro and Infosys.'' On the acquisition with Fujitsu, Rapidigm India Director Jitendra Tanna said, ''The acquisition gives both companies tremendous potential to fortify offshore services capabilities that will help clients maximise their growth opportunities. With this deal, we hope to globally expand and capitalise on the growing domestic market.'' Prior to the acquisition, Rapidigm's revenue for 2005 was 260 million dollars.

This was the third acquisition by Fujitshu in the last year.

On plans of further acquisitions, Mr Mitchell said, ''We plan to continue to grow both organically and through acquisitions.

But as part of our global development strategy, we are totally looking at the Indian IT market, while our BPO growth will be centred in Costa Rica, in US.'' Fujitsu Consulting is the North American arm of the 40.6 billion dollar Fujitsu Ltd. The company is targetting a 10 billion dollar growth in revenue from its business in North America form the present 3.5 billion.

UNI RA CS HS1512