The Hindu Business Line : Neilsoft setting up centre for Skanska

THE Pune-based specialised engineering technology services and solutions company, Neilsoft, is gearing up to become a dominant player as India becomes the global hub for outsourced engineering in the next 3 years.

It is ready with an action plan to corner a large chunk of the $800m-1.2 b business is expected to come in over the next two years.

The company, which offers solutions in the construction, software and mechanical engineering services space as well as CAD/PLM, last week bagged a contract from European construction major Skanska to set up a dedicated engineering centre in Pune, Mr Ketan Bakshi, Managing Director, told Business Line.

"Work on the centre will begin in April and a team of 50 engineers will be in place by March 07," Mr Bakshi said, adding the company would enter into offshore design partnerships with at least four major service providers in US, Europe and Japan in the course of the next two years.

Neilsoft has simultaneously kicked off a Rs 37-crore investment plan to expand its operations across all business segments, tap new markets in Scandinavia and Europe and increase its presence in the US markets, Mr Bakshi said.

"We will increase our team from the current level of 450 to 1,000 by March 08," Mr Bakshi said.

The company is, meanwhile, scouting the European market for companies with domain expertise in large projects in the infrastructure space.

"Infrastructure investments will peak around the world in the next few years and by picking up domain expertise in this space, we want to pitch ourselves as specialised vendor for large projects such as airports, sea ports and hotels," he pointed out.

Neilsoft is also in the process of setting up a European subsidiary in the next few months and will tap the demand in these markets for engineering design services.

The company is also foraying into the China markets where a new subsidiary will market its specialised ship building products and services to Chinese, Korean and Japanese shipyards.

The company closed last year with revenues of Rs 27 crores.