CIANT Corporation to enhance Indian R&D

EC Team / Kolkata

US-based CIANT Corporation, a software products and data management services company, will enhance its Indian presence by expanding its existing research and development base in Kolkata, setting up a data centre and conducting a series of seminars on quality of data.

Anirudha Basu, chairman & CEO, CIANT Corporation (parent of the Indian arm, CIANT Technologies) said, “We will introduce our products in the Indian market in a phased manner.” The company’s research and development unit, operational for the last six years is being strengthened with the addition of a second unit in the city. The R&D centre will develop products for the global and domestic markets. CIANT is also scouting for other locations in the country to set up data centres.

While the focus has been on markets outside the country, the company is now looking at the domestic segment. Since CIANT Technologies operates as a STP unit, Indian projects would be serviced by CIANT Corporation.

“CIANT officials will soon start meeting industry representatives to introduce the company’s products and explain how data quality software tools can have an impact on their bottomline,” said Basu Poor data quality leads to suboptimal decision-making resulting in missed cross-selling and sales opportunities, increased database operation errors, poor customer service, higher cost of operations, fraud, money laundering and homeland security risks.

The company will introduce data quality tools to enhance homeland security, fraud management and highlight best practices in customer relationship management (CRM). “The data management software will ensure non-duplication of customer numbers, check fraud and provide accurate prospect marketing,” he said.

Basu said that sectors such as financial services, telecommunications, retail, publishing, and government, where a huge amount of data is generated, would be key targets.

The company has also approached Webel, the nodal IT body of the West Bengal state government, to sell its data quality management products to government departments. However, the company declined to provide details of the financial arrangement saying that the deal was yet to be finalised.

CIANT already has partnerships with IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Unisys among others for product distribution.

The company recently inked a deal with ICICI Prudential Life Insurance to install its data quality management tool, DataGYM.