SolidWorks firms up India plans

SolidWorks, a leading provider of 3D computer aided design (CAD) tools, has drawn a three-pronged strategy to increase its India profile. This will help it capitalise on the growing engineering and design outsourcing boom, Ved Narayan, vice-president, Asia Pacific, said in Bangalore. Firstly, it plans to lay greater emphasis on education and training by increasing the number of colleges that get to use SolidWorks as CAD tool for engineering students.

Secondly it plans to increase the number of offices from 12 to 20, while simultaneously increasing the number of its channel partners from 18 to 30 by the end of year. The new cities that will be covered by this expansion include Jamshedpur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Indore, Kochi and Goa. And finally, it will also increase headcount in its India’s R&D arm from 50 to 80 while increasing sales force also. Narayan said that the net effect would be greater penetration for SolidWorks leading to an increase in business.

NURTURING TALENT

The automotive industry also stood to gain from utilising a better qualified workforce. “This will allow them to capitalise on the increasing design and engineering services outsourcing opportunities,” he said. Narayan said the Asia Pacific region, including Japan, accounted for over 25 percent of overall revenue and this had been growing significantly over the last few years.

He felt that India was well poised to assume leadership position in the design outsourcing market thanks to its qualified engineering base. However, the challenge was to take local businesses to next level and compete with China in terms of R&D, product development, value addition and innovation, he said. Though SolidWorks has a versatile software suite, the prime concern among users is the lack of skilled personnel in using them. Realising this, the company has created the position of national education manager to better address education and training issues. During the last few months it has increased the number of colleges that use its software from 90 to 160.

PM Ravikamar, education manager for SAARC region, said that the company was subsidising its educational programme to a large extent. While it costs $40,000 per license for the commercial use of the bundled package containing the entire range of applications, educational institutions have to pay only $12,000 for 100 licenses. The company also provides additional support in terms of teachers’ training modules and student exercises.

R&D PROWESS

The company has recently tied up with CADD Centre to train candidates on SolidWorks. At present about 20 centres are offering training and this will be increased to 60 by the end of the year. CADD Centre is also authorised to sell a student’s version of software for Rs 3,500 per license. The Centre also provides student designer kits free of cost, but these come with a time-bound expiry of 150 days. Ravikumar felt that these initiatives would help plug the gap between demand and supply of skilled SolidWorks engineers.

Commenting on India’s importance as an R&D centre, Narayan said it was on par with the US because a host of patents filed by the company originated from here. Moreover, the India R&D centre also contributed substantially to every new release of SolidWorks’ software. 3D PLM, a joint venture between Dassault Systemes and Geometric Software Solutions, operates a SolidWorks software centre in Pune with a headcount of over 45 employees.

T MURRALI