RS Software managing director Raj Jain (left) in Calcutta on Saturday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury

Calcutta, Feb. 11: RS Software Limited is planning a rights issue for its shareholders. The rights offer, which is expected by the third week of March, will aim at raising Rs 16 crore.

The software firm has drawn up a two-pronged expansion plan. The first will be the expansion of the physical infrastructure of the company by adding another 60,000 sq ft space. For this it has already approached the state government for land in Sector V of Salt Lake.

In the second phase, RS Software will focus on improving its human capital by hiring more experts on specialised subjects and business consultants. The company plans to ramp up it current headcount of 450 by 50 per cent in the course of 12-18 months, said Raj Jain, managing director, RS Software Limited. The entire expansion will be Calcutta-centric.

RS Software is in the business of providing software solutions in the areas of manufacturing, logistics and investment banking for the last 14 years.

Currently, around 78 per cent of its revenues come from payment industry services.

?We plan to capitalise on the niche area of payment technology solutions and evolve as one of the leaders in providing quality software and technology services to the leading payment industry companies,? Jain said. Multinationals such as Visa and Nova are already using RS Software products, he added.

The payments industry worldwide is estimated to be worth $400 billion by 2010. The industry is growing rapidly in India, too, despite the fact that people in our country still make 60-70 per cent of their payments in cash, Jain pointed out.

The diverse payment technology solution includes the payment gateways, web and retail merchants (point of purchase/sale), payment card issuers and acquirers, front-end processors and leading card associations.

The whole payment chain includes a lot of intermediaries like the retailers or merchants, acquirers (the banks whose payment modes are used) and a national network under the vigil of the Reserve Bank of India.

Buoyed by a 30 per cent business growth annually, RS Software has projected a turnover of Rs 94 crore for the fiscal 2005-06.

The company is also doing consultancy work for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

?We believe that we can add value to the existing real time gross settlement (RTGS) system being used to connect banks by the RBI as a means of payment settlement network electronically,? Jain said.