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JEFF MERLMESTEIN/BILL CHARLES INC. for TIME |
By SARITHA RAI | BANGALORE
Posted Sunday, June 29, 2003; 14.08BST
Rajesh Hukku was on a sales call in 2000 trying to convince a large European bank to replace its crazy quilt of back-office computer software with his company's product. An executive gave him an unusual brush-off, telling him the company's system was so complicated, only God could figure it out.
Hukku, chairman and managing director of Bombay-based i-flex solutions, made a deft save. "Sir, we are Indians," he said. "We are very religious, and very close to God." Hukku won the business. Now he's trying to pull off another miracle: making his company the first Indian software producer to establish itself as a global brand. India exports $9.5 billion in code annually — but almost all of it is written under contract for mammoth outsiders such as Microsoft. Hukku, 45, wants i-flex to change that.
His company, which began as a separate business in 1988, sells a range of products under its FLEXCUBE label that help financial services companies manage banking, credit-card, mortgage, investment-banking, mutual-fund and capital-market transactions. It's a competitive field, dominated by firms such as Temenos and Misys, but i-flex has customers in more than 90 countries, including the American Stock Exchange. With FY 2003 revenue of $134 million and 2,370 employees, Hukku's company is large enough to qualify as one of India's 20 largest software companies — and the only one to market its own product. "The Japanese and Koreans make good cars and sell them worldwide. We Indians make sophisticated software. It is time for a 'Made in India' brand," says Hukku.
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