HYDERABAD: Income during the year ended March 31, 2003, was 1.32 billion against 1.08 billion during 2001-2002, the company announced Saturday. Its net profit and income for the last quarter ended March 31, 2003 registered 0.78 percent and 5.93 percent growth respectively over the third quarter ended December 31, 2002. The net profit was 84.2 million and the income was 342.8 million during the fourth quarter as against a net profit of 83.6 million and income of 323.6 million during the third quarter. Announcing the financial results for the fourth quarter and the year, VisualSoft chairman and MD D.V.S. Raju told reporters that the company had done well despite uncertainties in the world market. Income from software sales was 336 million for the fourth quarter and 1.31 billion for the year. Out of the software revenue for the fourth quarter, 324 million came from solutions and 12 million from products. Raju said the company had set a target of 20 percent growth. He said the conservative growth figure was mainly on account of the fact that the situation in the market was still fluid. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) scare, Raju believed, had forced many airlines to cut their flights and the international travel came down by 60 percent. Raju felt the Indian IT industry would be extremely happy with even a 15 to 20 percent growth in the next year given the uncertainties in the market. He said the unexpectedly long stagnation in U.S. economy, the Iraq war and SARS scare had their impact on the 30 percent growth the company was aspiring for the next year. He said while India continued to be preferred destination for offshore IT services, it was facing tough competition from others in business process outsourcing (BPO). He cited this as one of the reasons for his company not being aggressive on its BPO plans. Raju said the Philippines is as successful as India in BPO and Malaysia had also entered this sector bringing down the price substantially. He said that his company was also taking into consideration factors like the New Jersey Bill aimed at preventing outsourcing of official U.S. work and the growing concern in U.S over outsourcing jobs at low-end level.
Source: IANS