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Sasken plans IPO
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 06 April 2004, 19:30 IST
BANGALORE: India's Sasken Communication Technologies, which makes software that powers mobile handsets and wireless modems, is rebounding from a two-year slowdown and preparing for a keenly awaited initial public share offering.
Rajiv Mody, chairman and chief executive officer of the Bangalore-based company, said on Monday that Sasken was also looking at increasing royalty revenues from licensing its software stacks that help handsets talk to chips and networks.
"In the last two years, most of the excesses and implications of the (telecoms) bubble have systematically been wiped out," Mody told Reuters in an interview. "Now, things are looking up."
Backed by the investment arm of US chip maker Intel Corp, Sasken writes software for wireless devices that captures pictures, downloads movie clips and performs other functions. Its clients include Motorola Inc, Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc and Nortel Networks Corp.
"We should show much more sustained and steeper revenue gains over the next six to eight quarters," said Mody, who founded the firm in 1989 with four others including a Japanese national, after spending years in the United States as a microchip designer.
Sasken's revenue was flat at $22.6 million in the year to March 2003 after it fell 24 per cent a year earlier, reversing from heady annual 80 per cent growth rates during the Internet boom of the late 1990s.
Mody said he expected Sasken's revenue to grow by 30 per cent annually over the next few years and its staff of 1,300 to grow 30 per cent in the year to March 2005 after stagnating for two years. "We are very, very clear. Wireless is the big opportunity. It is in its infancy and the next decade belongs to it."