Swan Solutions on expansion spree

Mumbai-based Swan Solutions and Services, a solutions providing company, will
soon be opening offices in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and either Ahmedabad or
Baroda. It already has its presence in Gurgaon and Chennai. This expansion comes
close on the heels of the company's tie up with vendors like Parallels, Propalms,
EG Innovation and EMC in the last two months.

More vendor tie ups will be announced shortly, especially in the space of
solutions and not in the hardware business alone. Mohammed Sutarwala, MD, Swan
Solutions and Services claimed that this strategy was adopted because in the
ongoing slowdown customers were not keen on buying hardware, but were instead
looking at how they could best optimize their existing infrastructure.

Mohammed Sutarwala MD, Swan Solutions

“Over the years we built our competency in selling high-end hardware products
like servers, routers, workstations, etc, which has also gotten us good customer
accounts. Now we want to focus on offering services and solutions, because in
the sluggish market, this is what will buffer in the bottomline,” he said.

The company will also recruit more manpower in each of these cities once it
commences operations. It currently has 150 people on its payroll and has tied up
with service providers in over 200 cities to provide customers with support.
“Rather than having a large team of people all over the country, we have tied up
with local service providers who can ensure that a product is delivered to the
customer within two days and we have an implementation comple­tion report within
a week,” Sutarwala added.

The company posted a turnover of Rs 38 crore last fiscal, a growth of 20
percent over the previous fiscal. This year, though its revenues have seen a
drop of 30 percent, which is precisely why it is looking at bagging customers in
new cities to offset this drop. “We had prepared a five-year growth plan and
need to ensure that we get back on track. By working with vendors who offer our
customers value for their existing infrastructure, and tapping new customer
accounts, we are sure we will be able to achieve this,” Sutarwala noted.

Swan has given business divisions-enterprise solutions, project management,
telecom sales, facilities management and network security. Some vendors that the
company works with are IBM, HP, Microsoft, Wipro, Hitachi, Nortel, etc. It also
has a sister concern Emqube, headquartered in Dubai, which develops business
operations automation software for enterprises.