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Tally Solutions to go public next year

Ambarish Mukherjee

Nithya Subramanian

NEW DELHI, Dec. 14

TALLY Solutions, a Bangalore-based software development company in which the Reliance group had picked up a 50 per cent stake in November 1999, is planning to come out with a public issue after March.

A decision on whether to tap the domestic capital market or head straight for a listing with an exchange like Nasdaq will be taken only in March, the Chief Technology Officer, Mr Bharat Goenka, who is the company's original promoter, told Business Line.

``We will be going public not primarily for raising funds because we are not short of cash, but essentially to capitalise on the value fall-out that is associated with such a listing exercise,'' he said.

The company, which has a capital base of Rs 36 crore, is 50 per cent owned by the Goenka family. The remaining 50 per cent is held by six private investment outfits of the Reliance group: Reliance Link Pvt. Ltd, Newton Capital Pvt. Ltd, Equity Link Tradi ng (India) Pvt. Ltd, Warburg Capital Pvt. Ltd, Greenwich Capital Pvt. Ltd and Perigree Trading Pvt. Ltd, according to the company's documents filed with the Registrar of Companies.

Mr Goenka said, ``It will be a very small issue. May be we will be going for the minimum requirements as specified by SEBI, which is dilution of 10 per cent of the equity.''

Meanwhile, the company is all set to open offices outside India, with its Singapore office scheduled to come up in January and the Dubai office by March 2001. It plans to enter the US market by the end of next year. It is also planning to open offices in Australia and Nairobi.

Though basically a software development company, Tally is also focussing on services. ``We will be tying up with partners for that, while our core competency will remain in development,'' Mr Goenka said.