The Hindu Business Line : Lance Soft inks MoU with Bannari Amman institute

IS a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between an educational institution and industry necessary for identifying candidates off campus? While most companies would not look at signing of an MoU from placement point of view, Lance Soft Inc, USA prefers to take this route.

Its CEO and Director (International Operations), Mr Selwyn Abraham, who flew into Coimbatore to ink the accord with the Bannari Amman Institute of Technology (BIT) at Sathyamangalam in Erode district told Business Line that the $70 million company believes in associating itself with the institute well in advance to groom the potential candidate to its requirements.

BIT incidentally is the first institution with which Lance Soft has signed an agreement. The company is looking to sign up with three institutes, but is keen to firm up the agreement with BIT before committing further.

To a query on how the company picked BIT, an institution in a rural area, when the company had established its presence in Chennai and Hyderabad, Lance Soft CEO said, `Their response, infrastructure and attitude impressed us most. The location of the institution is not a barrier.'

Explaining the strategy, he said, `We spot the third year students and put them on an intensive three-month programme on attitude, communication and presentation skills. We then iron out the technical issues and the chosen team is invited to balance the skill sets and work on live projects. This is our method of assessing the candidate's potential. Eventually, they are placed.'

Reverting to Lance Soft's proposed expansion plans, he said, `We started our Indian operations only two months back - in September. Our team size is 50 at present. We are planning to scale up our operations and enhance the team size to 1,000 by December 2005.'

Lance Soft would have 150 on its rolls by December this year, he said and added that the company was picking candidates with basic programming skills.

Besides developing IT solutions for its existing customers offshore, Lance Soft has proposed to set up a call centre at Chennai soon. `Initially, it would be a 40-seater call centre. By December 2005, it would be increased to 2,000 seats. We are not planning to acquire smaller units in this space to grow,' he added.

The company had pumped in Rs 12 crore. `We will be shifting to our own building very soon. The deal is almost through,' he said.

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