India 4th largest market for Oracle in APAC

India is the fourth largest market for Oracle in the APAC (excluding Japan) region, according to its third-quarter results for the region, while China is the first followed by South Korea and Australia.

Oracle equates the market size in tandem with the nation's economy. So while Oracle has been in China for just about 17 years and in India for 19 years, China has been growing at approximately 9% per year. However, within two years, India has jumped to fourth position from fifth, while 5-6 years back it was in the 10th position.

Though the company denied giving any exact numbers, it registered 89% growth from its new license revenues in Asia Pacific & Japan whereas the database and middleware new license revenues went up 26% in Q3FY07.

In the past few years, Oracle has made 30 acquisitions in view with its focus on vertical markets. "Acquisitions in APAC region in the financial services, retail, telecom and utilities is not off-limits for Oracle," said Brian Mitchell, senior vice president, Asia Pacific while announcing Oracle’s third quarter results for APAC (Q3FY07).

On the Indian operations side, the company has 19,000 employees, a majority of which are in its development centre. This quarter also saw Oracle completing its first phase of expansion into 17 cities of India, which brought the total number to 23. Apart from the focus on education, healthcare, construction and real estate verticals the company increased its focus on small and medium enterprises (SME).

With 4,500 customers already in the SME segment, it increased its momentum by launching Oracle Accelerate Programme. To tap into the growing SME segment Oracle recently rolled out its CRM (customer relationship management) on-demand platform. According to Krishan Dhawan, managing director, Oracle India, though the software-as-a-services concept is yet to catch up with the Indian organisation CRM is one application that is easy to deploy and manage.

While speaking on its Q3FY07 performance Dhawan pointed out that the company has continued its momentum in acquiring customers and entered some new industry areas including cement, paints, construction, real estate, retail, education and healthcare. Some of the wins of the company are-- Godfrey Philips, LG Electronics, Gujarat Electricity Board, ICICI Prudential life Insurance Company, Shree Cement, and Tube Investments of India among the others.

Apart from this, Oracle is also planning to tap into the growing utilities segment and the media sector. "The Indian media sector has not been technology intensive and hence is a virgin territory for Oracle. Similarly with the SPL acquisition we are now in a better position to offer solution to the utilities segment," remarked Dhawan. Other than Malyalam Manorama and Amar Bazaar Patrika Oracle recently had a win in the media segment with Amar Ujala Publications.

With the Indian retail segment hotting up, Dhawan felt that the coming years will see an increase uptake of IT in this segment. Oracle plans to focus on the retail segment through its recently acquired company Retek. It has already set up a centre of excellence (COE) at Bangalore. The centre with 300 people will help retailers who want to increase their profitability through IT deployment.