The Hindu Business Line : SAP AG opens new facility in Bangalore

New facility: (From right) Mr Clas Neumann, President, SAP Labs India; Mr Henning Kagermann, CEO and Chairman, SAP; and Mr Georg Kniese, MD, SAP Labs India, at the new facility in Bangalore on Thursday. –

Our Bureau

Bangalore, Aug. 30

“I’m not somebody talking dreams. I’m just a businessman,” claimed Mr Henning Kagermann, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Executive Board of SAP AG, in the city on Thursday.

He inaugurated a new facility in the company’s campus in the city that can seat 2,000 employees. It is spread across 3,50,000 sq feet. In partnership with IIIT-B and BITS-Pilani, the company also launched the SAP Scholar programme — an industry-academia initiative to encourage engineers to opt for advanced degrees combined with professional training. Students who complete the post-graduate programme will get an offer to join SAP.

The head of the German enterprise resource planning software maker said that India is fast rising as a market, along with China. Asia contributes to 13 per cent of the company’s business.

Investing more

Oozing confidence about SAP’s position vis-À-vis competitors Oracle and Microsoft in Asia, he revealed that the company led with a 24.6 per cent market share. Oracle, at second place, has to show that they can grow organically, he said.

Mr Kagermann on Tuesday had announced an investment of $1 billion in the country in the next five years. On where would it be spent, he hedged with, “We are a pretty dynamic company. The investment would be a mix. Most would be in product development and support. The rest would be in marketing activities.”

He said that SAP had not chosen to “go to India for lower salaries, but for its talent. What is important to the economy is the number of jobs here”. SAP India employs 4,235 staff and will continue to hire in hundreds every year. “The Indian subsidiary may not get bigger than the American one in size, but it could be the equal of France or the UK, which are pretty large centres too,” he predicted.

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