• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager
• BL Club
• Smartbuy

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth
• Events 2007

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

T.E. Raja Simhan

Chennai, Sept. 17 The US Federal Reserve lending AIG up to $85 billion in emergency funds will provide “tremendous” business opportunity for Polaris Software Lab, according to the Executive Vice-President and CFO of Polaris, Mr R. Srikanth. “We are really excited about this.”

“In a situation like this AIG will require more technology to cut down cost and offshoring will be one of the major initiatives for them. With the recent agreement with AIG, we are at an advantageous position compared to our competitors to get business from AIG. The US Government now owns AIG and large sums of money will be pumped in to the company in future,” he said.

Mr Srikanth could not put a number on the expected revenue from AIG.

“It is too early to talk about that,” he said.

Polaris in August signed a ‘Professional Services Agreement’ with AIG Global to provide IT services to AIG and its member companies around the globe.

So far, any access to AIG was routed through only the joint venture company. It can compete with AIG Systems or other software vendor for doing business with AIG.

The Chennai-based software company also sold off its 20 per cent stake in AIG Systems Solutions Pvt Ltd (AIGSS) last month for Rs 23.26 crore to a subsidiary of AIG Global Services — a wholly-owned subsidiary of American International Group. It is learnt that there are around 1,200 employees are working under AIGSS in Chennai.

When the AIG Systems was incubated as a joint venture company in 2002, Polaris had invested Rs 3.26 crore for the 20 per cent stake, the rest was held by AIG.

On the National Stock Exchange, the share price of Polaris dropped by 2.53 per cent to end at Rs 77.05.

More Stories on : Outlook | Software | Investment Banking

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line