Software firm SAP, on Tuesday, said it would be focusing on the e-commerce segment in India, which is estimated to grow to over Rs.60,000 crore by the end of 2013, to acquire new customers for its enterprise application solutions.
“E-commerce is going to be a very big business. This is one target segment we are going after in India, where through Hybris software we’ll be acquiring new customers. We are going to be targeting e-commerce market in a huge manner,” Rajamani Srinivasan, Vice-President-Applications Sales, SAP Indian Sub-continent, told The Hindu .
The company had recently acquired Hybris, which is a market leader in the e-commerce space, he said, adding SAP would be enhancing the product further.
Mr. Srinivasan explained that with almost every product now being bought and sold online, the need for software solutions to manage businesses would only increase.
“…There are so many businesses that now transact online. One would need software to understand customer behaviour. Additionally, in order to drive growth good integration with back end supply chain will be needed.”
In addition, the company will be working on predictive analysis.
“Predictive analysis is unlike a regular analysis which talk about what has happened in the past. It gives insights to our customers on what will happen in the future.
“Customers are definitely looking at such capabilities.”
According to industry experts, the enterprise software application market in India is pegged at about $500 million and is growing at around 15 per cent CAGR (compounded annual growth rate). SAP at present has 60 per cent market share in the segment in India.
Newer verticals
While enterprise software has been deployed in verticals such as CPG, retailand automobiles , Mr. Srinivasan said the newer verticals that were fuelling growth for the segment were government, healthcare, education, agro-based industries, e-commerce and telecom.
“At this point of time if I need to pin point a sector which is investing a lot now and was not doing so earlier in enterprise software applications is probably the government sector. Across government — be it municipalities or state utilities there is a heavy focus on enterprise apps.” he said.
Mr. Srinivasan said enterprise software is used to gain competitive advantage.