The Hindu Business Line : Software testers in hiring mode

SMALL-SIZED, independent software-testing firms here are on a recruitment spree. After a two-year lull following the dotcom bust and slowdown in the sector, the firms have resumed hiring and plan to almost double their staff strength in the next 12 months.

The demand for testing mainly comes from software developers, banks and Fortune 500 firms. They are seeking independent testers , said an official of a Chennai-based firm that is into software testing.

Ready Test Go Pvt. Ltd (RTG), which tests software for performance, is to double its manpower to 300 by the year-end. The company is also investing between $0.5 million and $1 million (about Rs 2.2 crore and Rs 4.5 crore) on infrastructure in its city centre. The number of employees could reach 1,000 in about 36 months following increased demand for software testing, Mr Shiv Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, Cybernet Software Systems, Inc that owns RTG, said recently. The company was also looking to set up another facility, the location for which had still not been decided, he said.

Similarly, Maveric Systems Ltd, also a city-based software-testing firm, will increase the number of its employees to 250 from around 170 by the year-end. The company expects its revenue to double to about Rs 12 crore by the year ending March 2005. Maveric's major clients include i-flex Solutions, Polaris, Hexaware and MphasiS.

Software testing is to assess and evaluate the quality of work performed at each step of the software development process. Large companies have their own software testers, but invariably these professionals are mostly software developers, said a Maveric official.

Thinksoft Global Services too is on the same wavelength. An independent tester of financial software, Thinksoft has staff strength of about 250 and plans to add 25 per cent more every year, said a senior company official.

In India, there are mainly three types of players in the software testing market. The big 10 IT firms offer testing services to their overseas clients through new divisions. In another category, domestic firms supply manpower to big firms and the third comprises specialist companies with domain expertise-based project/services model offering independent mode engagements, said an official of Thinksoft.

Annual revenues for the first category in India would be over Rs 100 crore, while combined revenues from second and third categories would be another Rs 100 crore, the official said.

A couple of years ago, clients sought help from independent software testers at a later stage of software development. However, today, clients come at the design stage itself.

Fixing errors in software at an advanced stage of development would be 100 times more expensive than doing so at the design stage, said Mr Sridhar Kulasekharan of RTG.

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