A fattened Talisma plans expansions

Monday, 08 March 2004, 20:30 IST
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BANGALORE: Talisma Corporation has raised its second round of funding of $5 million from Oak Investment and Partners for expanding its global presence and signing up with partners for venturing into new markets. Last year, Oak had invested about $12 million in Talisma Corporation making it a majority stake holder in the company. "The recent investment has made Oak a super majority stake-holder in the company, holding over 75 per cent stake in the company," said Dan Vetras, President and CEO, Talisma Corporation Pvt Ltd. Subsequent to the venture funding last year, Talisma announced its merger with Canadian CRM major, Pivotal Corporation. However the merger was called off on grounds of a higher bid that Pivotal received and Talisma failing to match the bid. "We are in the process of expanding our business and operations and are not looking for an alternate merger plan because of the Pivotal merger being called off. Oak continues to invest on our operations and we have our business targets in place. We grew by 40 per cent last year and expect to repeat the performance this year," added Vertas. Being a privately held company, Talisma refused to divulge figures of its revenues but plans to break even during the next fiscal. It revealed that it added 20 customers last year taking its total number to 400. The company plans to open its own offices in Europe and Canada and increase its direct sales force by 30 per cent in the US. It also plans to increase its presence through partners in Malaysia and Australia. As part of its plan to expand its global reach, Talisma has entered in to an alliance with Mumbai based publicly listed software services firm, Orient Information technology Ltd. As per the agreement, Orient would market and implement Talisma’s product suite in the Middle East market. The company expects revenues of $2 - $5 million over the next three years from this partnership. According to Madar Research, the CRM market in the middle east is expected to touch $90 million by 2008.
Source: IANS
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