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IDS News
 "IDS Infotech betting big on aerospace design services"
23 Jun, 2008, 0223 hrs IST,Gulveen Aulakh, ET Bureau
 It's a special moment for Partap Aggarwal's software company and he just can't conceal his excitement. Brimming with energy, the 50-year-old managing director of IDS Infotech talks about the acquisition he’s just done of aerospace design firm BV Design Production Link (DPL) based in Rotterdam. “This is a huge accomplishment for us,” he says, explaining that when IDS began in 1990, its first tie-up was with a Dutch firm.
Aggarwal started a software design firm in Chandigarh when no one wanted to do business there. “At that time Punjab was still reeling under terrorism. No one wanted to come to Chandigarh or Punjab and begin a software business,” says Aggarwal. Since then he has taken his company from providing plain IT solutions into niche verticals such as litigation support, healthcare, publishing services, and aerospace engineering, with revenues of Rs 50 crore (2007-08).
After working for Wipro as a researcher and then opening a NIIT franchise in Chandigarh, Aggarwal had bigger plans on his mind. When IDS Infotech was launched, Aggarwal recalls being up against many roadblocks, given its location: “Those days there was no business ecosystem in Punjab. We didn’t have VCs and each time I had to borrow money from friends. The moment I mentioned Chandigarh, people questioned the safety of their project considering the proximity to Pakistan. Also, bandwidth was not sufficient so we lost the biggest contract for medical transcription to a Bangalore-based firm.”
The breakthrough came when the firm won a contract in Sweden worth Rs 10 lakh. The aerospace business happened by chance. “We were doing IT solutions for French major Dassault Aviation in 2002, when they suggested we do design engineering for them. Two years later, we took up aerospace as a full scale vertical,” he says. IDS Infotech has since made prototypes for companies manufacturing parts for Airbus and Boeing, medium sized plane makers Fokker and Embraer, Italian helicopter company Agusta Westland and of course, Dassault Aviation, which makes Mirage fighter jets.
When asked on how it felt to have made his first million, Aggarwal smiles. “It was a big deal at first but as the numbers grow, you start looking at bigger things.” The plan is now to take the company to Rs 200 crore in two years, says Aggarwal. And he wants to achieve this by focusing on 2-3 verticals rather than providing a gamut of services. Aerospace is one such vertical. Aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, Cessna are growing and so will the demand for design engineering and allied services. Large airplane manufacturing hubs in Europe, especially in France, work with outside vendors to manufacture parts to complete the airplanes on time. These vendors, in turn, outsource to smaller firms, which need conceptualisers for the required components. This is where it all starts for IDS.
DPL, too, fits in perfectly into Aggarwal’s plans. With access to major clients in Belgium, Holland, Canada, the US, France and Germany, it makes the prototypes outsourced by large aircraft manufacturers. The acquisition could also help the new entity win more clients such as EADS, which develops and markets civil and military aircraft, missiles, space rockets, satellites and related systems, Belgian aerospace company Sociétés Anonyme Belge de Constructions Aéronautiques (SABCA), besides the US-based Lockheed Martin, which is one of the largest defence contractors in the world.
Aggarwal wants to don the mentor’s cap in the years to come, and guide the business across its nine branches across India, Europe and the US. Right now, he’s on overdrive, chasing two new aerospace engineering deals in the US, which he hopes to conclude soon. “An entrepreneur without hunger is not an entrepreneur at all,” he says.
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"IDS Infotech
Ltd. has become approved member of the elite Accelerance
Global Partner Network of expert global software development
companies."
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