Aspire
asks for more product developers
Wednesday June 22 2005 00:00
IST
CHENNAI: Aspire Systems is looking at doubling its
turnover during the current fiscal to Rs 26 crore from Rs 13 crore
last year. Speaking to this website’s newspaper, Gowri
Shankar Subramanian, CEO, said, “We are looking at a PAT of Rs 5
crore this year compared to Rs 3.5 crore earlier.”
The
Chennai-based software product development company will move into
new premises at Sirusseri soon. According to Subramanian, Aspire is
planning to develop 40,000 sq ft of area with an option to add
another 20,000 sq ft in the second phase. “We will initially add 300
seats in the first year and another 300 in the second year. When
completed, the facility will have a capacity of seating 1,200
people,” he added.
The company has chalked out these
expansion programmes in the wake of the huge opportunities that the
software product development arena offers. According to NASSCOM
estimates the software products development market is likely to
touch USD 8-11 billion by 2008.
The real challenge,
according to Subramanian, is the availability of talented manpower.
The projected demand for product-focussed professionals is estimated
to be around 2.5-2.8 lakh by 2008.
Subramanian feels that
presently India cannot cater to even a fraction of the demand. “The
problem is that most of the IT professionals of today are not so
bothered about the nitty-gritty and that makes a lot of difference
in product development. For instance, things like wrong
capitalisation, spelling etc result in costly glitches which take
time to rectify.”
Unlike the BPO or other sectors where there
is an increasing interface between the academia and industry, in
product development it is not so.
“We have started talks with
leading engineering institutions to impart these skills at the
curriculum level itself. This helps us as we often end up spending
huge amounts on imparting these skills,” he
adds. |
