OA COMPSERVE: Moving With The Tide

OA Compserve (OAC) grew its solutions revenues by 19% to touch Rs 67 crore in
2003-04, with services pitching in Rs 4.28 crore. The focus on services has been
enhanced in the past seven months and in lieu with this, the services team has
been strengthened. It crested this growth wave largely due to its focus on four
verticals-defense, education, railways and the SMB segments.

OAC converted two of its divisions into two different companies - Silicon
Comnet and Renovation Comnet, for better business focus. Silicon Comnet looks
after the networking business, while Renovation Comnet takes care of the
consumables business. As the parent company, OAC focused on the flagship
services business.

Silicon Comnet has deployed several solutions on a variety of technology
platforms and has four divisions - networking and solutions, telecommunications,
infrastructure cabling and WAN service support. It has deployed WLAN solutions
for the Indian Army and provided network integration services at Essar Cellphone.
It's other clients include the Bombay Stock Exchange and Delhi Stock Exchange.

Among major projects that the company bagged last fiscal was the networking
of the Army headquarter's technical center and management of the Air Force
material and management project. This was followed by a Rs 3-crore project for
Hutch last fiscal.

It also got the Rs 3 crore research and referral hospital project of the
Indian Army. One reason why OAC has been able to bag a large number of
government-related projects is because it is an empaneled supplier to the Delhi
government. 

OAC has also achieved ISO 9001:2000 certification in a bid to become a
process-oriented company. Despite these efforts, it faced some rough weather in
high employee turnover.