Opus bags $1.8-million US deal

By siliconindia staff writer   |   Monday, 24 May 2004, 19:30 IST
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BANGALORE: Breaking into the tough US market is what most Indian IT product companies dream of. For Opus Software, gaining customers in the US however is no sweat. This Pune-based provider of software solutions to the financial services industry has bagged a deal from FTen Inc, a leading provider of trading services to hedge funds. The deal worth $1.8 million may not be big in size. It, however, significantly enhances Opus image in the lucrative US market. FTen is Opus fifth Wall street customer. Ramesh Mengawade, founder and managing director, Opus Software told ET that TradeNow suite of trading software from Opus will power FTen's trading systems and provide it with order routing, direct access to NYSE, NASDAQ and ECNs and straight through transaction processing capabilities. TradeNow has been already tried and tested by major Wall Street brokerage firms like JMS Securities (2nd oldest Wall Street stock broking firm), Wedbush Morgan and Advantage Trading he said. Its other customers include top 5 brokerage firms on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and HDFC Securities in India. Mr Mengawade said that broad range of features and low cost is aiding TradeNow to gain customers in the competitive US market. The product costs 30% to 40% lower than a competing US product he said. The biggest challenge facing product companies are marketing and branding cost. Getting the first few reputable customers in key US and Europe market are very vital for a product company to succeed he said. Opus is among the rare breed of software product vendors in software services centric Indian landscape. Its Electra Suite of products are used for mission-critical applications such as ATM networks, card management and payment gateway by several banks outside India. Its Indian customers include ICICI, IDBI, Corporation and Dena Bank.