Indian Product Firm eat into MNC’s share
June 2006, The Economic Times

Who says India Product companies can’t battle it outr with the SAP’s Oracle and IBM of the world? Ask Tally which has dare to challenge the dominance of SAP and Oracle in the ERP Space. Or even Pyxis Systems which has launched a product that competes with Sungard and Reuters or Newgen Software and is successfully winning market shares from American measures such as EMC, NCR and Unisys. Up against the brand power and pedigree of the North American and European software majors, India Minnows are using the India advantage to offer “Value for Money” and a better understanding if the local condition.

“With our entire product development based in India, we are 30%- 40% cheaper than that of our competitors. That’s a big competitive advantage against our competitors, whose major operations are based in high cost centers in Europe and North America”, Says Pyxis System’s Founder and President Mr. Sunil Nikhar. The company has developed “Riskompass”, a product for derivatives deal valuation and Risk Management. It has already bagged 2 clients. Pyxis Competes with similar products from companies such as Sungard and Reuters.

Other Indian Companies are banking on scale provided by the large Indian Market to take on MNCs, whose focus has mostly been large Indian Companies. “MNCs follow the Gartner definition which classifies its small and medium business (SMB’s) as those with the minimum turnover of Rs (150-200) crores. That’s not our focus, we want our ERP package to be used even by a Rs. 10 crore company”, says Tally Vise President, Head South Africa Sales Mr. Subhas Arora. “While SAP targets 100 customers a year in India, we have already signed 750 in the last 3 months”, he added.

To garner numbers, the company is targeting industrial clusters across the country. For instance, its representative contacted around 10000 industrial units in Faridabad to understand their IT needs. It plans to repeat the same in Chennai. It’s the same with Newgen Software which makes work flow and document management software maker

Newgen Software. The company differentiates itself from the foreign competitors such as IBM and EMC on the basis of lower life cycle cost and faster implementation.