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by Jay Shankar

BANGALORE, India, April 28 (AFP) - Sitting at his desk inside a three-storey building m India's technology hub of Bangalore, Sanjay Shah proudly demonstrates the software product that has earned him eight million dollars.

Shah, a former computer manufacturer, created Accware, a business enterprise solution for small and medium enterprises in 2001.

He has 1,200 customers in the US and expects his revenues this year will double to 16 million dollars.

His firm, Icode, which has its research and development facility in Bangalore, belongs to a small club of technology firms that have chosen a niche area and are growing at an amazing rate while bigger firms have fallen from triple digit growth rates.

"Icode is a product-driven company unlike others which focus on software services," Shah said. "When I was working in the US I saw a tremendous opportunity for selling accounting software."

Shah and three other Indian professionals set up the firm in 1991 and five years later moved the research and development operation of the Washington-based firm to Bangalore.

"Icode developed an application for DOS and later for Windows. This replaced about 20 different packaged software systems that were available in the US and in 2000 the company launched Accware Online for e-commerce," Shah said.

"In July 2001 a new version of this was released. There is a huge demand for our product in the US market and now a new version called Everest for large enterprises has been launched."

The company is riding high on its success and plans to increase staff strength from the current 340 software engineers to 600.

Venture capitalist CDC Group has invested 500 million dollars in Icode and the firm is looking for a second round of funding.

But Icode is not the only example. Satish Dass, 36, and his three partners took the same route to tap into unchartered seas and are also raking in the dollars.

Founded in Bangalore during the peak of the dotcom boom in July 2000, Ilantus decided to implement identity management solutions for US and Asia-Pacific firms.

The software enables computers to identify the person entering it and will only give access to authorised people for specific functions.

"Companies are very sensitive towards security. We ensure that proper security is maintained 24 hours," Dass told AFP.

"The whole sector is worth more than a billion dollars and only a handful of companies are in it. In the Asia-Pacific region there are only about three companies."

Ilantus has 12 customers and after surviving 2001, which Dass calls "the worst year in this business", the firm hopes to double revenues to four million dollars this year.

The company has trimmed its employees from a peak of 45 to 25 after being badly mauled by the IT meltdown.

"Things are looking up now but we are not yet out of the rough," Dass said.

Srini Rajam left his high-profile job at Texas Instruments to set up Ittiam Systems in January 2001. His firm develops digital signal processing systems, which includes algorithms and software used in digital cameras and cell phones.

"The market size is estimated to be in multiples of billions of dollars and there is no established leader," Rajam said.

"Ittiam chose to play in this area for the market opportunity and opportunity to lead.

"Ittiam has just completed one full financial year of operation and performance has been solid. Products from all areas of focus -- Audio-Speech, Image-Video, Wireless and Wireline have been sold to clients across US, Europe and Japan."

Rajam said the company's product strategy had been revamped with strong potential for higher revenues within the next three years.

"We intend to achieve a high growth in terms of revenue and productivity. Our goal at the end of the fifth year would be around 40 million dollars," Rajam said.

Indian IT majors, Wipro Limited, Infosys Technologies and Satyam Computers have all announced 30-50 percent growth in the financial year to March 2002 compared with more than 100 percent growth in the last fiscal year. 

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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