SAP to invest euro 20 M, hire 1700 more

Tuesday, 23 November 2004, 20:30 IST
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BANGALORE: SAP AG, the global German leader in business software solutions, Tuesday announced Euro 20 million additional investment to expand its India development facility here. "The additional investment is being made in SAP Labs India to increase our headcount to 3,000 people by 2006 from 1,300 currently," SAP executive board member Peter Zencke told reporters here. During the first two phases, SAP invested Euro 20 million to set up the India facility at Whitefield on the outskirts of the city. The fresh investment in expanding the facility will make SAP Labs India the largest development centre outside Germany, where SAP AG is headquartered. "With 3,000 engineers, the India facility will be SAP's second largest the world over, followed by our US facility at Palo Alto," Zencke said. SAP's development centre in Germany employs about 5,000 developers. With the Asia-Pacific region emerging among the top three markets for SAP, the global ERP (enterprise resource planning) software major expects to grow 1.5-2 times than the market. "We are aiming to triple our business in India during the next couple of years through an accelerated growth plan," Zencke said. In 2003, SAP India grew by over 70 percent, with 57 percent market share in the ERP segment and 26 percent market share in CRM (customer relationship management) space. SAP has a base of 650 customers in India, including 280 firms in the small-and-medium business (SMB) segment. It has over 1,000 installations across industrial verticals. During the first nine months of 2004, SAP India added 45 new customers and is targeting to grow 2.5-3 times than the market in the SMB segment. The India facility focuses on high end product development for SAP's global customers, driving innovation in diverse areas such as development platforms, business intelligence, applications, exchange infrastructure and knowledge management. "SAP Labs India has emerged as a strategic development centre for us globally, with 10 percent of global patents filed by SAR generating from here," Zencke said. The Bangalore centre develops one-third of mySAP CRM solutions, 40 percent of the business solutions group-manufacturing industries and 33 percent of all mySAP human resources country solutions.
Source: IANS