The country's largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services is set to enter the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) markets of Ukraine and Belarus, besides making further inroads in Russia.
TCS hopes to achieve this by offering TCS BaNCS, its bouquet of financial software products to banks, insurance companies and capital market entities in these three countries.
In line with this strategy, the company has joined hands with Universal Kube, a Moscow-based IT services company that will serve as its implementation partner for the region.
“We will be targeting all three countries in one stroke…The idea is to jointly go after the top 100 banks, insurance companies and capital market entities in the region,” Mr N.G. Subramaniam, President of TCS' financial solutions business, told
With an IT spend of roughly $17 billion, as suggested by a research report by Business Monitor, Russia clearly is the largest market in the region. Of this, the market for software products is projected to rise at a compounded annual growth rate of 15 per cent to touch $5.3 billion by 2014, thereby making Russia potentially one of the most significant global software market opportunities.
In fact, the two players have been working in tandem to localise TCS BaNCS product suite for the Russian market, he said. TCS BaNCS was enhanced to support Russian accounting standards, enable real-time integration with the national payment system and comply with regulatory reporting and other country-specific accounting and back-office business processes.
While Russia is home to two of TCS' customers, Ukraine and Belarus are completely virgin grounds for the $8.2-billion IT company.
Indian IT companies have traditionally stayed away from the CIS countries mainly because of language issues and cultural differences. TCS has been ahead of the curve in this regard as its first engagement in Russian happened in 2007 when its BaNCS suite was selected by B&N Bank, Russia's largest commercial bank.
“Yes, Russia has been a closed, difficult market from several perspectives where traditional business practices such as work permits and so on are still prevalent there. However, the market is opening up as several financial institutions are keen to fall in line with global accounting and governance standards,” said Mr Subramaniam.