Oracle plans one office in every state capital

Enterprise major Oracle plans one office in every state capital

Oracle is looking to have branch offices in all Indian state capitals as part of its plan to boost business while some of its larger competitors deal with problems of their own. 

Oracle, founded by technology billionaire Larry Ellison, counts companies like HP and IBM as its major competitors. HP is going through a restructuring exercise that may see as many as 50,000 employees cut from its ranks. 

Separately, IBM has struck a deal to sell off its x86 server business as it focuses on higher margin products. "We are growing in India and we think that, with the manifesto of the BJP that focussed on technology, we are going to see increased spending on IT. We are looking at a geo-expansion strategy and the plan is to have a branch office in every state capital," Sandeep Mathur, managing director of Oracle India, told ET. 

Currently, Oracle has offices in the five metro cities and places like Pune and Ahmedabad. Mathur declined to give a timeline for the expansion but said it was the company's stated goal. 

The company has been growing steadily in India over the past few years. In 2012-2013, the company grew its revenue 15% to Rs 10,590 crore, according to Dataquest Top 20, making it the tenth-largest technology company by revenue in India. 

Oracle does not break out the revenue or growth rate of its India business. "With Oracle, it has been a mixed bag, there has been strong customer demand for their enterprise applications like RightNow and Eloqua and database license renewals have been doing well. But I would think sales of the ExaData and Exologic systems have been a little sluggish outside BFSI and telecom," said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research. 

ExaData and ExoLogic are part of Oracle of engineered systems business - integrated software and hardware - that promised more efficiency and faster workloads as the components were built to work together rather than stitched together later. The company counts Reliance Commercial Finance, HDFC Securities and HDFC ERGO General Insurance Company as clients.