Brief

Sophoi to invest $2.5 m in India

Sophoi, a provider of enterprise intellectual property management, has announced expansion plans for India. The company plans to invest $2.5 million and double its headcount by 2007. Its projected turnover by 2007 is $19 million and the investment is a step towards achieving this goal.

Venkat Reddy, CTO, Sophoi said, “Creation of intellectual property is about culminating a story or idea into a product which could be either a film or a book. That also consists of product-planning and acquisition areas of intellectual property.” The creation process comprises the first half of the supply chain of intellectual property and the second half is about exploitation of that intellectual property. “Exploitation entails making money out of the intellectual property. It includes marketing and promotion, sales and distribution, and accounting and finance.

intellectual Property Licencing Suite (iPLS), the product suite of Sophoi, attempts to automate the entire supply chain of intellectual property.

Venkat Reddy, CTO, Sophoi; Wilfred Pinto, Director, Engineering, Sophoi; and Lt Col V K Abrol, Director, Sophoi; addressing the press

Sophoi handles the IP management rights for entertainment industry leaders such as Paramount and CBS Television. “iPLS is an enterprise-scale solution. It covers every single department in large enterprises like Paramount and CBS,” said Reddy. According to him, 2,000 to 3,000 users from the administration, marketing, and sales departments in these companies use iPLS in their day-to-day jobs. iPLS being a mission-critical application has to be scalable, maintainable and offer good throughput.

The Sophoi-built iPLS is implemented at the customer’s site with the help of system integrators like IBM, Cap Gemini and Accenture. “At Paramount we have our iPLS implemented by IBM Global Services. We stay away from the services space,” said Reddy.

Sophoi is currently focussing on increasing its headcount. It soon plans to diversify into Product Support Organisation, Product Document and Training Support and Technology Research and Development. It also intends to expand its operations to cover multiple product lines.