Our Bureau

Chennai , March 22

SMALL and medium computer software companies from India have an opportunity to provide services - at which India has proved itself to be good - in the area of security software.

Speaking to Business Line before his address at the IndiaSoft 2005 meet, Mr David Assia, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Magic Software, Israel, said: "Israel alone has 25-30 software companies in the security software product arena. Companies from Israel specialise in all sorts of software security - firewalls, anti-spam and anti-virus software, encryption and the like."

He added that Indian IT companies could complement product companies with its services and implementation skills.

Magic Software, which provides a software environment for application development, derives only some six per cent of its $75-million revenues from Israel. "Substantial portions come from other areas such as Japan."

How come Japan, where Indian companies have always faced a stumbling block due to the language? "Israel is a country of immigrants. Even though immigrants from Japan are not many, we do have people whose roots go back there. Likewise, we do good business in France, Germany and Hungary."

He also said that Israel had benefited immensely from Russian immigrants, whose number had gone up to one million in the last 10 years.

Asked if product companies out of India had some more ground to cover, he said: "Product companies need money for development as well as sales and marketing. From what I have seen, there is not enough venture capital money yet in India."

Mr Assia signed off saying that among the several countries Magic has subsidiaries in, India required the maximum paperwork for companies to operate smoothly. "The bureaucracy was terrible, but it is becoming better now."

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu Business Line