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Raja Simhan T.E.

CHENNAI, March 26

THE lifting of the sanctions by the US on India in September last will see business operations for SGI India returning to normal early next year.

After a gap of three years, the company expected regular business to come from the Government including the defence and science (education and various research institutes) sectors in a few months, Mr Avinash Fotedar, Director, Marketing and Alliances, SGI India, told Business Line.

SGI India, the Indian arm of the $2.3 billion computer company SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc), was one of the American firms badly hit by the US sanctions imposed on India in May 1998 following the nuclear tests. The company lost 18-20 per cent of business in India due to the US sanctions, he said.

"The Government officials are taking time to identify the exact requirement. We hope to see orders coming in within this year. Since the lifting of sanctions, there has been no effect on the ground level, and no major business has come in for the company from the Government," he said.

The sanctions were lifted in September last, following India's support to the US in combating terrorism.

According to Mr Fotedar, despite the sanctions, on a year-on-year growth, the company's revenue in India increased by seven per cent in 1998-99, and by 17 per cent the next year. ``If the sanctions were not there, we would have had faster growth,'' he added.

Company officials have projected around 30 per cent revenue growth in India for the current year ending June, 2002. Asked to comment on the projections, Mr Fotedar said it was a `quiet' period, since the parent firm was to announce the quarterly results in a few days.

``During the sanctions period, there had been a lot of technology changes. The, the Government, and the defence in particular, need to sit down and evaluate their requirement from organisations such as us. It is a massive exercise and cannot be done in isolation,'' he said.

Out of total revenue from India (there are no figures available for the country as the company provides only consolidated figures from the US), the defence contributed around 8 per cent, 25-35 per cent coming from the manufacturing and the rest from media and science, he said. ``The economic slowdown affected us badly in the manufacturing sector. Some of the major deals got postponed. We hope to close those deals by the year-end,'' he added.

SGI provides various applications to the defence including training and aircraft simulation, war gaming, command control, intelligence, terrain and satellite image processing.

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