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Bijoy Ghosh

Upbeat on SMEs: Mr Krishan Dhawan (right), Managing Director, Oracle India Pvt Ltd, and Mr Anup Varma, Regional Director, at a press conference in Chennai on Tuesday. –

Our Bureau

Chennai, Oct. 14

The Indian market continues to be strong for Oracle, the US-based software company.

At present, there is no slowdown in business in India, and it is early days to talk about it. Clients in sectors such as manufacturing have good orders that they received in the past.

“Globally, a lot has happened in the last few days. Let the dust settle down, he told newspersons.

In the last two years, Oracle added nearly 1,200 mid-size Indian companies (of less than 500 employees) across manufacturing, retail, pharmaceutical, financial services, education and BPO/IT-enabled services.

Some of the clients are Mayur Suiting, Rajasthan State Cooperative Bank, Foster Wheeler, Keane, L.G. Balakrishnan & Bros and Madhyanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam.

Mr Dhawan said traditionally, business for Oracle in India came from large companies. However, that’s changing positively with SMEs going in for automation.

Oracle now has two groups — one targeted at large companies and the other at SMEs. The model and pricing is different for both groups, he said.

According to Mr Anup Varma, Regional Director, Technology Commercial Sales, Oracle India, for an investment of around Rs 5 lakh, a SME could have an IT implementation, including hardware, software, networking and training. Depending up on the requirements, it could be scaled up.

The key requirements for SMEs to look at IT solutions are time to market (quick returns); affordability (low upfront cost) and ease of use (need not hire highly qualified professionals to manage IT systems). Oracle has been focusing on all these issues through its package software for SMEs, he said.

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