Dhawan: Thumbs up to a bright future

Jaipur, July 17: Oracle India will focus on the retail, auto and textile industries to boost growth in its accounting year ending May 2006.

“Last year, we saw good growth in the financial services, telecom, government and manufacturing segments. These will continue to grow this year,” Oracle India managing director Krishan Dhawan said.

The company will focus on the retail, textile and auto industries, he added. “Domestic companies are increasingly becoming part of the global supply chain and this demands a lot of integration and investment in information flow. The general trend in all segments is towards compliance.”

Oracle has already acquired retail applications companies Retek and ProfitLogic and plans to introduce their products soon.

“With the acquisitions in retail space, we have expertise to service the segment, which is likely to see a rapid flow of foreign direct investment in the next few years,” said Dhawan.

“Domestic textile companies are also linking with global chains and a lot of modernisation is expected in this segment.”

Oracle plans to set up a development centre for Retek products during the year. Retek did not have a presence in India before the acquisition, but was planning a centre.

“India is the tenth largest auto market and is turning into a global sourcing centre for auto components,” added Dhawan.

The company also plans to focus on the mid-market segment and predicts a strong leaning towards Linux in this segment.

According to IDC, Oracle has a 41.3 per cent market share in India. Gartner estimates that the company has a 55 per cent share in the Unix market and 81 per cent in Linux.

Oracle clocked $11.8-billion sales turnover for the fiscal ended May 31, 2005.

The Apac region contributed to 14 per cent of the total sales, with India and China as the leading markets.

The company has 6000 database customers and over 400 applications customers in India. It added 70 application customers last financial year.

India will also play an important role in Project Fusion, which involves developing next-generation applications under Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards.