Nicholas Piramal plans separate IT business

Nicholas Piramal India Ltd, the Mumbai-based pharmaceuticals major, is planning to spin off its information technology business into a separate company. The move is in line with the company's plan to diversify into infotech "in a big way".

Nicholas Piramal is in the process of finalising initiatives to propel its Rs five crore IT division, Psytech (Piramal System Technologies), into a Rs 100-crore unit in the next three years.

Besides demerging the IT business, the company is evolving a strategy to tap global markets. It aims to rope in a partner following the demerger. A new chief executive officer has been appointed recently to spearhead the IT operations. He is expected to take charge in June 1999.

"We are looking at IT in a very big way, mainly providing turnkey solutions for implementing integrated ERP systems and GroupWare, which are our main strengths," Kailash Kaimal, general manager - projects, Psytech, told domain-B.

Nicholas Piramal is in talks with a number of companies for joint ventures in project implementation. They include QAD Inc., the service alliance partner for MFG Pro software.Talks with QAD are still at a nascent stage, as the latter has a tie-up with Thirdware Systems, the biggest implementers of ERP in India.

On the globalisation drive, Kaimal said that the company would offer turnkey solutions using its expertise in MFG Pro and is targeting companies in the European countries.

Psytech recently joined hands with Pune-based PC Soft Automation Pvt. Ltd for marketing and implementation of its ERP product "Int-E-view" in western India. Psytech is investing Rs 3 crore in this project. The division has recently bagged contracts worth Rs 1 crore from Lupin Laboratories and Indochem for Int-E-view and from Godrej Eyecare for re-implementation of MFG Pro along with its integration with Lotus Notes.

Formed in 1992, Psytech was initially involved in integrating all the six group companies of Nicholas Piramal. It later diversified into providing various services like consultancy in business process re-engineering, ERP implementation, GroupWare, software development in RDBMS and GUI Front Ends and corporate training.

The division has tied up with IBM for application development for the South Asia Pacific region, Tata IBM for solutions and services on IBM's Intel-based range of software, and Progress Inc. for application support and services of RDBMS.