Polaris ties up with HK firm for foray into CHINA, MACAU

Shyamala Seetharamanan, Chennai
Financial Chronicle The Times of India The Hindu
Polaris Software Lab announced its tie up with PCCW Solutions on Monday to jointly market the former’s banking and insurance solutions in Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China. The move is part of Polaris’ strategy to explore new markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

PCCW Solutions is a subsidiary of Hong-Kong-based telecommunications company PCCW. The two companies will leverage Polaris’ flagship product Intellect Universal Global Banking (GUB) 10.0. The partnership will integrate presales and sales operations and solution architects of the two companies to cater to the Chinese market.

Polaris has identified China, Russia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe as the growth markets for the Intellect suite of products, said Arun Jain, chairman and CEO of Polaris. The company entered Vietnam, Chile and Egypt last year. The roadmap for this fiscal includes entry into new markets and setting up of sales forces to aggressively market all of the group’s products such as banking, HR and insurance solutions, he said in a recent interview.

“We will keep looking for newer markets in South and West Asia and Africa and the minimum criterion for choosing a country would be whether it can contribute at least $10 million revenue over three years. We will be spending between Rs 15 crore and Rs 20 crore to enter the new countries this year,” he added.

The strategy is an extension of Polaris’ three-point growth engine, which includes expansion of services offered to tier I organisations; tapping tier II and tier III banks and financial institutions in developed markets, and entering new markets to gain leadership position in the respective countries.

Polaris reported about 79-per-cent increase in net profit to Rs 130.71 crore for the year ended March 31, 2009.