SAP to hike its investment in India

Zero to 1000 customers in 9 years and 1000 to 2000 in just 12 months, enough of a reason for the global board of SAP to meet in India. SAP's Chairman and CEO and says the company is all set to hike its 1 billion dollar India investment plan.

It took SAP 9 years to add 1000 customers in India. The next 1000 came in just 1 year. Reason enough for the full board of the company to meet in India for the first time. The company's India head Rajan Das says SAP is adding on an average 4 new customers every working day in India. These customers include not just large Indian companies like Tata Motors , Wipro but also a lot of the SME's. SAP had last year announced an investment of 1 billion dollars over a period of 4 years. CEO Henning Kagerman now says the company may need to hike their investments.

"If we continue to grow at this rate then we will need to revisit our investment in India. we might do it next year" he says.

India is the third largest centre for SAP in terms of employees with a little over 4000 people. But in terms of revenues India's contribution is still minimal. The whole of APAC and Japan accounted for just 12% of the company's revenues. 98 million euros was India's contribution to SAP's revenues as against the 2.6 billion euros that came from the US market.

"We are not worried about this. We know that we need to be patient now and revenues from India will rise sharply" adds Leo Apotheker, Deputy CEO, SAP AG

SAP is betting on retail, real estate and banking to drive growth in India. The company will also be launching a pay for use software called A1S targeted at SME's with under a 1000 people. The management says this product is tailor made for markets like India. SAP has also announced a tie-up with Wipro to jointly develop solutions for customers.