46. ORACLE INDIA: Operation Beef-up 

There was cause for cheer at Oracle India, with the parent company committing a $50-million investment over 18 months to ramp up operations in India; infrastructure development at Oracle centers in Bangalore and Hyderabad is in the offing. (Oracle has invested about $100 million in its Indian operations in the past seven to eight years.) The company also announced plans to scale its employee strength from 1,100 to 2,000 during the 18-month period. This will be part of the company’s strategy to play a dominant part in the e-business solutions space by May 2002.

The dot-com bust was a big blow for the booming B2C market, but e-business has survived the debacle, and market research agencies have predicted it to soar. The year 2000-2001 saw Oracle launching its ‘super suites’ aimed at simplifying the e-business process. The response to Oracle 11i Application launched in June 2000 “encouraging”. June 2001 has already seen the launch of Oracle 9i, a low-investment database targeted at
SMEs.