The Hindu Business Line : SAP India to double SMB customer base

The Director, Sales, SAP India, Mr Srinivas Rao, said that the company acquired about 57 customers by December 2003, including about 31 SMBs. The company expects to double this number this year touching several new areas including chemicals and allied areas.

"The entry barrier for SMBs has come down significantly. From broadly about Rs 50 crore, we have had deployments in a company with a turnover of Rs 11 crore. This augurs well for the industry as they can deploy a high-end affordable solution that helped grow the market."

The company has chosen three partners — OBT Global, Vygyan, which has been recently acquired by Cognizant Technologies and Mahindra Consulting. Each of these strategic partners has a specific industry focus. "While Mahindra Consulting addresses automotive vertical, OBT handles pharma, engineering and textiles, Vygyan addresses other segments," he explained.

Working closely with the industry partners, SAP India was in the process of rolling out a range of solutions covering new verticals, which include trade and wholesale, chemical, sugar mills, jewellery and media houses. SAP had about 23 verticals; the accent is on fine-tuning them and further customising for new verticals," he explained.

As per the IDC, the ERP licence and maintenance market is estimated at about $38 to $40 million and of this about 47 per cent is contributed by the SMB market. Over the next five years, this could be about $280 million market. Out of about 450 customers for SAP in India, spread across 1,250 installations, 200 of them are in the SMBs.