DQ CHANNELS SILVER CLUB: SOLUTION PROVIDER:17-21

17.Orient Technologies :Rocketing The Ranks

With several awards in its kitty and new projects coming its way, Orient has further strengthened its position on the leaderboard vis-à-vis the previous year

What Ajay Sawant and his team could achieve for Orient Technologies in the year 2006-07 is noteworthy. Not only have they rocketed up the rankings, but also there have been some truly neat achievements for the company this fiscal.

The company posted a turnover of Rs 77 crore in the last fiscal, which is a 38 percent growth over the previous year's Rs 48 crore.

Orient Technologies opened its branch in Pune last year and trained 120 employees on various technologies. This aside, Orient added VMware and thin client technologies to its portfolio.

It certified 73 people last fiscal and also bagged awards from Citrix, Fortinet, HP and Microsoft. But of these all, the most prestigious one was from Citrix, since it was bagged at the APAC.

The company found several new projects landing in its portfolio last year. Prominent among them were projects from Crisil, CNBC Newswire and Gujarat Ambuja. Orient Technologies also lapped up good contracts from JP Morgan Chase & Co and VSNL.

For AMCs, Orient is currently offering its support to 27 cities across India. It has full-fledged sales and support offices in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Pune.

Orient also provides various services like help desk services, backup management, asset management, network management, vendor management, mail management, anti­virus management, etc.

18.Omnitech InfoSolutions :Bright Future Ahead

Last fiscal saw the company launch several new products and services. The Omnitech camp therefore had all the reasons to be upbeat

Omnitech InfoSolutions entered into a joint venture with Al Mutawa Group last fiscal, working towards the disaster recovery center and consulting services in Bahrain, which will fully operational very soon. Also, as a first step towards inorganic growth, EdVenture Systems Inc (ESI) became a part of Omnitech InfoSolutions.

These tie-ups were critical for the company as their sales turnover increased by 29 percent. The company clocked a turnover of Rs 78 crore in 2006-07, up from
Rs 55 crore in the previous fiscal.

The company claimed that its bottom line grew by 95 percent, international business by 90 percent, services business by 150 percent and Omnicians' team grew by 65 percent. In 2006-07, Omnitech InfoSolutions launched several new products and services, which included OmniMonitor-an IT infrastructure monitoring service; build-operate-transfer (BOT), and software-as-a-service (SaaS) models. Most of its business in the last fiscal came from the western region, contributing 63.14 percent to overall revenues, followed by 23 percent from its international projects.

For the next FY, Omnitech InfoSolutions plans to continue growing at the pace it had during last year. it will continue focusing on enhancing its offerings to create further niche markets and expertise, penetrate into new markets such as the US, Canada, UK, Belgium and other european countries, Japan and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries; achieve inorganic growth through strategic acquisitions and investments; expansion of client base through the acquisition of new clients; and continuation of investments in R&D for product development and technology deployment.

19.Syntech Informatics :On Salvage Drive

After posting low revenues the previous years, Syntech is now identifying the loopholes and focusing on providing end-to-end customer solutions to regain its momentum

Kolkata-based Syntech Informatics has finally identified the ambiguities in the system because of which things having not been in its favor in the past few years. The company became a focal point three years back for growing at over 350 percent marking a revenue of Rs 36 crore against Rs 8 crore during FY '02-03, and also got itself registered as the fastest growing company in the DQ Channels Silver Club 2004. But soon came the downfall and growth plummeted after Syntech found itself spread too thin and involved in lot of activities without focusing specifically on any one.

After its exponential growth rate initially, the company revenue went on to decline gradually. With a revenue of Rs 61 crore in 2004-05 and Rs 75 crore in 2005-06 the company clocked a growth of 70 and 23 percent respectively. Further it posted a revenue of Rs 78.2 crore in FY '06-07 showing a growth of just four percent. But this drastic decline was an upshot of Syntech having identified the loopholes and started focusing on providing end-to-end customer solution than mere box pushing. Last year, it decided to rethink its entire business strategy and redefine its focused business activities. Keeping this strategy in mind, Syntech strengthened its technical resources to facilitate turnkey projects. It also concentrated on providing top-level consultancy, designing and delivery of IT services. This year too, the company plans to add 10 more people to its technical staff taking the team strength to 45. In its newfound role as solution provider, Syntech bagged some significant OEM deals with IBM, TCS, ECIL and CMC.

20.Embee Software :Making IT Easier

With a steady growth of around 11 percent for the past two years, Embee Software has gradually emerged as one of the strongest solution providers in eastern India

Kolkata-based Embee Software remained rock steady with its performance throughout the year. Although it did not achieve a steep growth, it maintained a consistent 11 percent growth for the last two years, and hence secured its entry into the Silver Club this year as well.

Having increased its top line consistently, Embee emphasized more last year to reinforce its bottom line, which it managed successfully. Not only did it streamline its internal work processes, but also focused more towards consolidating its business with existing product lines rather that entering any major tie-ups.

The company also invested significantly to increase its manpower strength across the country as well as spent considerable man-hour towards training the staff. The overall augmentation in infrastructure and manpower especially in the Western part of India proved to be a key contributor towards achieving its growth.

SAP-related solutions and implementation remained its prime work area. A major break-through for the company came in form of its ERP licensing and implementation with SAP that took place last fiscal. The new development resulted in Embee making a place for itself in the SME segment, as it further extended its client base to tap the booming SME and SOHO segment.

Apart from that, Embee has a wide and rich stock of clients that comprises from various sectors.

Starting from IT-enabled products and solutions from HP and IBM; volume licensing from Microsoft; desktop management solution from Intuit (Track-It!), network integration services and products; facility management services; IT infrastructure management services to LAN, WAN and wireless network design and implementation, the company has a large offering for its clients which has enabled it further to maintain its command as an system integrator.

21.Ashtech Infotech :Big Plans Afoot

Ashtech Infotech proved to be the proverbial dark horse of 2006-07, by assiduously growing its business by 38 percent in 2006-07, and making its debut in the Silver Club

It was a great year for Ashtech Infotech, which grew by 38 percent in 2006-07 and touched a revenue of Rs 72 crore, up from the previous fiscal's Rs 45 crore. This performance guaranteed it a place in the Silver Club too.

There are plenty of awards that company added to its kitty last fiscal. HP named Ashtech Infotech as its Best Partner in the western region for commercial, TSG and PSG products. In addition, Hitachi DataSystems awarded Ashtech for a significant contribution to its India business. Ashtech also won the 'Super Partner of the Year' award from Sun Microsystems. It has got a certification from VMware.

Of the total revenue of Rs 72 crore in the last year, around 82 percent came from the western region. The contribution from the eastern area was a mere two percent and the northern and southern regions contributed approximately eight percent each to the total revenue.

As for the market segment divide, Ashtech Infotech's major revenue share came from the banking and financial services industries. SME/SMB contributed
30 percent, while IT/ITeS/telecom contributed 20 percent. To round it up, government projects contributed five percent to the total Ashtech revenue.

Ashtech Infotech hired 30 new personnel and trained the same. The total number of employees went up to 217 and this figure is likely to go up to 235 in 2007-08.

The company currently offers IT solutions to corporate in the areas of mobile computing, storage, security, backup/recovery, enterprise systems management, and also in services like infrastructure management, technology consulting, etc.

Some of its clients include ABN AMRO Bank, Alliance Capital, Bloomberg, Citibank, Crisil, HDFC Bank, Accenture, Morgan Stanley, Ness Technologies, Trac Mail, Alkem Labs, Blue Star, Cadila, Reliance, Videocon, BARC, Dalal Consultants, Global Esecure, Hutch, ISRO and Tata Infotech.

Ashtech Infocom has vendor alliances with Acer, Apple, Citrix, Cisco Systems, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, RSA Security, Sun Microsystems, Veritas and VMWare.