Sun wants to help build 100 dotcoms
Over the next three to four years, we want to help create up to 100 dotcom companies in India, each with a market cap of around $10 billion,” said Lionel Lim, Sun's VP and MD (Asia South). “That is, perhaps, the biggest investment we can make in this country,” he added.

Sun, he said, planned to push the Net economy in India much the same way it had done in Singapore a few years ago. Primarily, it would be through offering its technical expertise and incubation funds. It has already started an incubation program with ICICI. Besides, it is working with DoE (department of electronics), LG (for developing appliances) and PricewaterhouseCooper.

The company has other plans for greater presence in India. It has evolved a three-pronged strategy- -to increase the number of people working at its engineering center in Bangalore to 500 in 12 months from around 100 at present; to open new offices; and to expand its Java pool program to help engineers develop network-centric program and devices.

EMC likely to ramp up headcount to 1,000
EMC Corporation, the information storage and management major, is to hike its headcount in India to around 1,00 from current 600 by the end of this calendar year. EMC, which had earlier committed investment of $250 million by 2007, is also looking at expanding its presence in the country.

The strategy is to fortify the company’s presence in India, which is the largest market outside North America, according to William J Teuber, executive vise-president and chief financial officer.

With 60% of IT spending coming from outside the US and only 42% of EMC’s total revenues coming from international markets, the company is committed to increasing this. “ EMC is deeply encouraged by India’s IT vision and direction,” he said.

EMC has around 600 personnel at its R&D center in Bangalore and intends to add another 400 personnel this year, as it would concentrate on software development. Meanwhile, the company is also looking at expanding its presence to around 26 cities in India.

Jon Murray, regional program manager (business continuance), said, “India is the largest market for information storage and management outside North America and is also growing at a phenomenal pace”.

EMC has solutions centers each in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and has an office in Kolkata.

In November 2003, the firm committed a $100 million investment over five years to grow the market and strengthen local partnerships, and increased the investment to $250 million in February 2005.

Texas financial software startup to open in city
Mcube Investment Technologies, a Texas, US based startup that makes a web-based software product for money management, will open a Bangalore office, sources, said.

Mcube, whose software product, Alpha Engine, is used by the customers such as the
$24 billion Dutch Metalworkers’ Pension Fund has used Microsoft’s .Net technologies to build product.

Alpha Engine was of use to Pension funds, endowments, foundations, central banks, investment bank research groups, fund-of-funds or hedge funds. They could use this web-based software as an aid to decision making, Mcube said in a release.

The product helped money managers evaluate investment strategies for any asset class and decide on tactical asset allocation, manager allocations, futures across stocks, bonds, cash currency and commodities, the release said.

Clients can customize analyses to their specific portfolio structure, benchmarks and policy constraints. The net impact to most funds is often higher returns, better governance and risk management, and operating cost savings the release said.

Srinivas Bette, co-founder and chief technology officer of Mcube said, “Microsoft has helped Mcube to deliver a state-of-the art web application that combines sophisticated financial computations with an easy-to-use interphase. Microsoft .Net technologies offered as a US a complete platform that simplified our integration and deployment cycle by at least 30% .

Mcube, through an alliance with ORTEC Consultants, a Dutch Consultancy in the field of advanced planning and operational support, also sells software for asset-liability management, performance attribution, index tracking and risk modeling, its release said.