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Strategic entry for SAS
India's CEO -
OCT 19, 2003
Things have indeed been hotting up for the business intelligence segment in India, and it’s at a crucial time that Vivek Gokarn has taken over as CEO and managing director for both the SAS subsidiaries in India — SAS India and SAS Global Services. SAS, a global leader in business intelligence solutions, is the market leader in India, according to a recent Frost &Sullivan report. With a worldwide revenue of $1.18 billion, SAS is the world’s largest privately held software company with a presence in 113 countries. Gokarn, who joined SAS in early 1999, has held various responsibilities in the four and a half years that he worked there. That included successfully establishing and managing a SAS research and development (R&D) and consulting company in Pune called SAS Global Services — that was his last assignment in SAS, in fact. SAS Global Services was a huge success, developing software for all verticals (financial services, services, government, manufacturing, retail/ CPG/ wholesale, pharmaceuticals/ healthcare, telecom, utilities and some others) and turning out to be the largest R&D and consulting centre outside the US. “For SAS, R&D is serious business and it invests 25 per cent of its revenue on it. And at SAS Global Services, we got a good hang of the flavour of international consultancy,” explains Gokarn. For some time now in India, SAS has taken good advantage of its early entry into the market and can therefore boast top of mind recall among business intelligence solutions providers — “70 per cent top of mind recall”, according to the Frost & Sullivan Report, Business Intelligence in India 2001-2008. But now there are many more companies staking claims in this space. And Gokarn’s clear about his focus in the suddenly competitive market: “The focus will be on growing the sales arm — that means more than doubling the sales force to at least 15 people by year end.” Secondly, Gokarn is also looking at new verticals to make an entry into, besides the financial services, telecom, manufacturing and pharmaceutical sectors that the company already has a presence in. “We’ll be creating a dedicated focus around alliances with companies such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, TCS, Tata Infotech, MindTree, etc. There’ll be a consolidation of partnership alliances so that we can make an entry into the government as well,” Gokarn says. Awareness about business intelligences is just beginning to spread to the not-so-tech-savvy sectors, and Gokarn’s task is to tap the opportunity that he sees there. Currently, SAS has reported a 30 per cent year-on-year growth in revenues in India. All this doesn’t mean that the focus will only be on sales and marketing. In fact, Gokarn will also be overseeing the huge expansion of SAS Global Services which is already on the company’s “growth map”. There are plans to double the area at the SAS Global Services facility in Pune to 12,000 sq ft and hire some 70 more software engineers out there. Evidently, SAS is eyeing the opportunities in India very seriously and Gokarn’s appointment is at a time when things are really happening for this software segment. |
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