Opus Software, three years old and raring to go

One acquisition. One joint venture in the making. A revenue graph doubling every year, and touching Rs 10 crore by March 2000, expected to treble by March 2001! That's Opus Software Solutions for you.

For a company that is not all of three years old, that is enviable achievement, but Mr. Ramesh Mengawade, promoter-managing director says the company's domain knowledge goes back much longer. "We (the promoters) have been in financial service solutions for nearly two decades, and we know what is involved in the business."

Mr. Mengawade and the other three promoters, two of who are alumni of IIT Kharagpur, go back a long way when they worked on developing a stock trading solution, which was later sold to Nasdaq. This is Opus' impressive pedigree.

After the company was formed, it has been involved with various projects in the banking and financial sectors. It helped set up the ATM networks for three of the country’s largest private banks -- HDFC Bank, UTI Bank and ICICI Bank.

It has also implemented the only VISA certified payment gateway in the country for HDFC Bank, and is in the process of obtaining similar certification from Amex and Mastercard.

Recently it was entrusted with the task of net-enabling all of Western Union's money transfer operations, globally. With Western Union operating through 67,000 agents world wide, it is a formidable task.

Presently, the company is in the process of entering into a joint venture with a US based company to develop internet security software. (The company was unwilling to reveal the name of the US partner)

According to Mr. Mengawade, this joint venture will help bring to the Asian markets, the best of internet security products available in the US. The company will develop products, and also conduct the R&D for existing products of the US partner.

"Internet security is a big issue, and the work we have been doing so far (at Opus) has a lot of synergy with internet security," says chief executive Mr. N. Kulkarni.

Internet security marks a new dimension to Opus' business domain, which has been focussing on financial services software in the twin areas of channel management (switching) and financial transactions on the internet.

These cover areas of e-commerce, which includes internet stock trading; internet banking, particularly switching transactions, covering all kinds of channel management ATM, POS, mobile, (except teller), where the company provides switching software that routes out the different transactions, and e-trading solutions. The company believes that its past experience in cross border financial transactions, gives it the edge in developing solutions for transacting on the net.

Opus is also present in data warehousing, for which it a product called Trendis, which helps analyse the trends of transactions and the behaviour patterns of the service users.
Besides TRENDIS, the company's other products built in-house include tradeNow, an internet stock trading solution, And PAYe, an electronic bill presentment and payment solution that connects banks with utilities. An implementation using a version of PAYe is being carried out for IDBI Bank, which is in the process of tying up with a number of utilities such as electricity boards, telephones, and others. Two brokering houses in the US, Advantage Trading, and Empire Securities are using customised versions of tradeNow.

In its bid to grow quickly and build up on its expertise, the company has opted for the joint ventures and acquisitions route as its business growth model. It recently acquired Chennai based NePlus Technology, an internet R&D company specialising in high performance transaction on the internet.