The $572 million Rational Software’s Indian arm has a strong presence and mind share with the country’s development community with its range of software testing tools. M K Bharatee, country manager, Rational India spoke to Pankaj Mishra about the company’s achievements in the market so far, as well as upcoming trends in the software development arena

What kind of customers is Rational Software addressing in India?

We have segmented our Indian users into three categories; Indian software firms like Wipro and Infosys, MNC firms like Lucent and Intel and end users like Reliance. As of today, we have sold over 15,000 licenses in the country across a client base of 800 companies. Bangalore, being the hub of the software development in India accounts for more than fifty percent of our revenues. We have segregated customers as tier 1, 2 and 3 accounting for 40, 160 and 1000 clients respectively.

Most MNCs have an India development centre. Do you have a development centre in India?

We established a development team way back in 1993 which now consists of around twenty-five professionals. Being a product company, there is no need to scale up the number of developers in India. Instead, we are outsourcing the development of some of our existing product lines partially to the Indian team. At present the Indian team contributes to three of our existing product lines. Our focus has been on the marketing of tools in India and so far, we have invested Rs 15 crore in the Indian operations.

Has the slump in the software market been detrimental to your business in India?

Our products are targeted at the software development activity, therefore any slowdown is bound to affect the sales of our tools. Most MNC vendors have scaled down development in the US and are moving more projects to their Indian facilities. As a result, the demand for our tools has increased in that segment. However, some of the Indian software firms have seen negative impact on their businesses. So, the segment comprising of Indian firms is undergoing a slump. Some of our orders were cancelled because our clients themselves lost many projects. However, the third segment consisting of Reliance and DRDO is still showing signs of growth. In fact, CMC has emerged as a key account for us.