Newspaper : The Indian Express
Date : 25th Aug, 2002

IT to sweep shipping sector

Offshore software development maybe the buzzword in the Indian IT arena, but the use of information technology is yet to sweep the marine industry. "It is said that the $35 billion shipping industry has not yet fully understood the importance of using the information technology. The industry can save at least five percent of the total expenditure by using IT", says Chairman of shipping conglomerate Bombay Marine Engineering Works and Inter Ocean Ship Repairs, V.S. Chhabra, who has 40 years of experience in the shipping industry.

Chhabra says the IT revolution in the shipping industry is expected to begin from India as 35 percent of the world's shipping industry is managed by Indian engineers. In an attempt to take advantage of low penetration of IT in the shipping industry, Bombay Marine Engineering Works and Inter Ocean Ship Repairs have jointly promoted an IT solution providing company V2Infotech.

"Though shipping will be our core target, we obviously don't want to miss out other segments. We have tied up with Danware-Denmark for exclusive South-East Asia rights for its user-friendly Remote Control Systems NetOp 7.0, Customer Relation Management (CRM) and logistics softwares. Similarly for the shipping industry we have an exclusive alliance with Microsoft for their ERP product Navision," says Vibha Bakshi, MD of V2Infotech.

The company, which operates from US, Middle East and India, already has a very impressive list of clientele including McDonalds, Cadbury Ltd., IPC, HDFC, Wilco International in India. It also launched Planned Maintenance Software, a tool developed in association with HT Ship of Denmark, to assist the Chief Engineer in bringing maintenance operations of the ship in line with sound quality management. V2Infotech was also recently appointed as an Oracle Partner Network member.

On why Microsoft should sign with V2Infotech in India when they already have a presence in the country, Bakshi said: "the tie-up is exclusively for their shipping vertical. If they get any enquiry on the shipping business they are suppose to pass it on to V2Infotech.