The Hindu Business Line : UBICS keen to make India a key hub

The global members who were present at the meeting on Thursday included Dr Vijay Mallya, Chairman of UB Group, Mr Sunil Patil, President of Global Solutions (in Pune), Mr Girish Godbole, President of Global Services, and the Directors, Mr Scott R. Heldfond, Mr Manohar B. Hira and Mr T. V. Lakshmi Kanthan.

Talking to newspersons, Dr Vijay Mallya, who is also the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of UBICS, said the company had aggressive plans for making India a strategic centre for its global initiatives. "Our decision to start the India operations and making it a strategic hub to UBICS' global business plan has been greatly vindicated in our last year's performance. I see UBICS clearly emerging as a leader in the Indian IT industry and a jewel in the crown of the UB Group," he said. Dr Mallya added the UBICS board had okayed the company's plans for inorganic growth through acquisitions. He said the acquisition must make `strategic sense' and the company would look at opportunities to achieve accelerated growth.

The focus of acquisition will be education, human resource management, e-education and e-governance in India. The company currently has two products, Ventive and SeeItFirst. Ventive is a recruiting and resourcing automation product built under an ISV agreement with Microsoft. SeeItFirst is a patented interactive streaming video technology for employee communication, remote training and education, both on demand as well as real time.

Dr Mallya said that the future plan of UBICS is to have a mix of products and offshore work solutions. UBICS currently has about 275 employees on its rolls and has plans to ramp it up.