Managing Trade Globally

n Where is the

global trade management solutions market headed?



The entire global trade management solutions market is entering a crucial

phase now with logistics majors like FedEx and UPS showing major interest on one

side and e-business majors like Oracle and i2 Technologies evincing deep

interest in our products on the other. Oracle has a user base of 20,000 across

the globe that uses trade management solutions to transact. For us it is a $100

million opportunity. Let us say we repeat it with SAP, Peoplesoft, and other

majors, the potential is just tremendous. Moving further, if I build a fee plus

transaction model, then the market just loves it.

n Could you

elaborate on ‘Trade Adapter’, launched recently by NextLinx, which is seen

as a shift in the bolt-on software category?



Traditionally, bolt-on software suffered from many disadvantages. With Trade

Adapter, we have broken all these barriers. First, it has a screen similar to

the original application and is embedded into the original application screen

itself. Second it has no overlapping functionality and is slimmer relatively.

Overall, it is much easier to deploy, and infact we give a guarantee that any

user would be up and running within 24 hours with trade adapter. The RoI thus

becomes very attractive.

n How has the

recent recession affected business?



We have been achieving our earning estimates, our total manpower strength

has infact grown in this period and we are actually getting more aggressive in

the market, stepping up our investment, looking at more offices etc.

The reasons are not hard to find. With increasing globalization, global trade

is only going to increase and post September 11, the complexity of trading

across borders has only increased.

n ...And where

does India figure in this roadmap?



India is living up to our expectations. We initially began undertaking

support development work here, which slowly grew into mainline development work,

then integration responsibility and now the Indian team is shouldering complete

product responsibility. The other area where India has been growing is content.

India is now a strategic technology and content hub for NextLinx.

n Would you be

looking at collaboration or relationships with Indian IT companies?



Yes, very much. As the Indian arm grows in its responsibility, the current

thinking is to allow itself to focus only on the core functions and outsource

support and other work to local firms competent. That outsourcing is already

happening and we are currently working with three local IT companies here. I see

this only increasing with NextLinx growing globally and India continuing to play

a major role.

Abhinav Singh/CNS in Bangalore