Ranjan Das in Calcutta on Friday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta, Aug. 24: SAP, the world’s third largest independent software solutions provider, will for the first time hold its board meeting in India. The meeting is on August 29.

Around 100 executives from SAP offices all over the world and the seven board members will come to India for a week-long meet starting August 27. The company will prepare strategies and give away customer excellence awards during the period, which has been termed board week.

“This is the first time such a meet is being held in India. This shows the importance of the country in the scheme of SAP’s global plans. India was given the status of a strategic hub in 2006. This hub is one of the three in the Asia Pacific and nine globally. Our India operations have grown 35 per cent last fiscal,” said Ranjan Das, president and CEO of SAP India.

SAP, which started its operations in India in 1996, plans to invest $1 billion in the country between 2006 and 2011.

The current headcount at 4,235 is set to double during the same period. The workforce includes 3,500 professionals at the SAP Labs, 550 at the global delivery centre and 185 field personnel. The company’s business in India has tripled over the last five years.

SAP has a market share of 34.4 per cent in enterprise resource planning, 10.3 per cent in customer relationship management, 39.3 per cent in supply chain management and is a market leader in the SME segment.

Das said SAP would bring some of its best practices introduced in the US to India. This will include HR initiatives, staff training and customer service.

The HR initiatives will help SAP triple its revenues by 2010 and add 15,000 customers. Between 1996 and 2005, SAP got 1,000 customers. In 2006-07, the figure will be doubled to 2000.

The growth of SAP in India has been fuelled by sectors such as banking, finance, security and insurance, retail, manufacturing, and public services. SAP’s revenue grew over 25 per cent in the first half of 2007. While the education business is growing over 50 per cent year-on-year, SAP plans to increase the share of SME revenue to 50 per cent by 2010.