Newspaper : Times of India - Bangalore
Date : 30th Oct, 2002

V2 Infotech scouts around for strategic alliances

V2 Infotech, a niche player and part of Bombay Marine Engineering Works - a shipping group, that specializes in logistics and ship maintenance software is looking out to build synergies with IT companies here.

The company is riding on its domain knowledge of ship building and the partnership with Microsoft which allows it to develop applications on the Navision and Great Plains platforms.

Says Ved Chhabra, Chairman, V2 Infotech, who visited Bangalore IT.Com, "About $35 billion is spent every year on ship purchases and not even 5 percent of it is automated. Although ship manufacturers build capabilities with plug and play facilities, shipping lines are not very keen to implement them for day to day operations."

Unbelievably, although they have high tech tracking devices and dock in ports which are completely automated, most of the ships maintain a manual record of the crews. "And, even the offices of the shipping lines hardly ever implement any ERP systems - and when any spare parts need to be ordered or replaced, there is not way to keep track of suppliers online," Chhabra added.

According to him the software has to be user-friendly and more easily available. "And, we are also making IT training for marine engineering training institutes so that engineers would be more open to adopting this on ships," he commented.

V2 Infotech's Development Center in Mumbai has about 60 people who are working on the software for ship maintenance. This brings it in direct competition with Scandinavian companies like Xantic, Lavel Seas and Barbarship management.

Incidentally, the parent company has also tied up with Iran for a $500 Million project for building a ship-yard in that country for which V2 Infotech will also be providing IT inputs.