Ellucian, a technology solution provider to educational institutions, has announced a new facility in Bangalore with the intention of targeting local institutions and developing India-centric solutions. The company also stated that it had bagged a contract from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore to set up their IT back-haul.
The US-based company will also work with Symbiosis, Pune in order to bring their administrative and finance operations online. Milind Kamat, Vice President, Ellucian India, said, “We are increasing our focus in the Indian market as we see a lot of untapped opportunity here. We have several projects in the pipeline,” he added.
Ellucian’s new office in Bangalore brings together the functions of marketing, sales, engineering, services, and support. By co-locating all the departments, the company expects to accelerate the rate of delivery of new products and provide broader support to its customer base in India. Currently, 40% of the Ellucian’s global R&D is done out of India.
The company plans to offer customized solutions to higher educational institutions, with long-term data management services. Ellucian also plans to tie-up with hosted data center providers to facilitate data storage for specific educational institutions.
“Carpet bombing the market is not an answer. Every educational institution requires some solutions that are specific to them. We are going to focus on that,” Kamat said.
According to Springboard Research, IT spending by India’s education sector is estimated to increase to $704 million in 2012. As of 2011, India had 42 central universities, 275 state universities, 130 deemed universities, and 90 private universities.
