The Hindu Business Line : TCS executive to join Polaris as COO — Govind Singhal quitting Optimus Outsourcing for `personal reasons'

(From left) Mr Arup Gupta, President and CEO, Polaris Software; Mr Arun Jain, Chairman; and Mr Prabal Basu Roy, Group CFO, at a press conference in Chennai on Monday. - - Bijoy Ghosh

Chennai , Oct. 3

MR Arup Gupta, President, North America, Tata Consultancy Services, has joined the Chennai-based Polaris Software Lab as President and Chief Operating Officer.

He will be responsible for Polaris' global operations, delivery and sales functions.

Mr Arun Jain, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Polaris, takes over the mantle as Chief Architect.

Mr Govind Singhal, Executive Director at Polaris, and CEO of Optimus Outsourcing, Polaris' BPO arm, is leaving the company for personal reasons, Mr Jain told newspersons.

According to Mr Jain, Polaris now had the right product and reference sites and it was time to focus on execution, which would be taken care of by Mr Gupta.

In the last three quarters, the company had signed four large banks as customers, which are in the same league as the Citi Group, he said.

"We now have a strategy that would take Polaris to $1 billion in revenues comfortably. This could happen in two, three, four or seven years," he said.

"I was looking for a little more challenging role and a strong desire to be outside TCS, and Polaris gave me the right opportunity," said Mr Gupta, who was with TCS for 25 years.

He said his contribution to Polaris would be on building customer relationship, and in taking the value and offering from Polaris to customers.

Polaris reported a net profit of Rs 12.96 crore on sales of Rs 209.38 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2005 compared with a net profit of Rs 24.09 crore on sales of Rs 179.59 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.

Net profit for the quarter ended March 31, 2005 was Rs 5.80 crore on revenues of Rs 196.43 crore. It may be recalled that in 2004, Polaris brought in Mr Koen van den Brande as President, Product Group.

In 2001 the company brought a number of key people, including Mr Raja Krishnamoorthy as President, Human Resources, Mr Chander Singh, as Senior Vice-President, BankWareTM unit and Mr Natarajan Narayanasamy as Senior Vice-President, Strategic Alliances and Initiatives.

In 2000, Dr Ashok Korwar joined the company as an advisor on strategic thinking and knowledge management.

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