Oracle India: Exports Take Over

HIGHLIGHTS India Development Center drives top line growth Mid market offerings see significant uptake High brand-equity and marketing muscle Continues to consolidate on traditional strengths in telecom and banking in the domestic market Competitor MS SQL Server continues to nibble away at smaller accounts Perceived as a company with poor post-sales support

After the difficult recovery of fiscal 03, it was consolidation time at Oracle India. The domestic business finally began to see some sustainable traction though the real growth driver was the company's fast growing development center in India. In fact, DQ estimates that Oracle's IDC grew 57% to Rs 512 crore and now accounts for 61% of its total revenues. The domestic business grew at a more modest 21% and now accounts for 39% of the business, down from 45% just a year ago. This is intentional. Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison was in India last fiscal, like a lot of other CEOs to woo the Indian developer. The company's development center grew from 2200 people by March end 2003 to 4000 by the end of fiscal 04. This does not include the company's back office work done out of India. In fact, Oracle's entry into the Top 20 this year has mostly to do with its IDC.

Shekhar Dasgupta Managing Director Murali Subramanium V-P, E-business development Vivek Marla V-P, Global Consulting

In the domestic market, the company saw growth in its traditional segments-telecom and banking-and some offtake from the government. Customers for its ebusiness suite included Tata, Bharti, Hutch and Idea (in telecom) and HDFC and UTI (in banking). In manufacturing, ITC and Titan were big wins while it made its first forays into pharma-traditionally a SAP stronghold-with Ranbaxy. E-government projects included citizen portals for the Kolkatta, Kalyan and Dombivali Municipalities.

New offerings during the year included Oracle's flagship database in its new avatar that supports grid computing-Oracle 10g. Also, the new SMB offering-Oracle's database Standard Edition One (SEO) and E-Business Suite Special Edition-saw offtake from government local bodies and banks looking for branch level applications. It took its Linux initiatives further with first level support (code level support) for all its customers who have chosen Linux as the platform. These included customers like Kotak Mahindra bank, IDBI and
BSNL.

However, despite the big branding push, post-sales support remains a big issue. In fact, one of the company's directors apparently quit in September after a huge row with the MP government's commercial taxes division where an implementation went seriously wrong. Though Oracle has maintained it wasn't at fault, it is at the very least a perception issue that the company will have to deal with.