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Software in India - Ricardo Software & CAE Newsletter, Q3 2009
01/09/09
In the eighteen months since Ricardo Software entered into its regional distribution agreement for India with Caepro Technologies Pvt Ltd of Pune, the profile of Ricardo Software in this rapidly expanding automotive market has grown considerably. “Our initial area of focus was on promoting awareness of the Ricardo Software product portfolio”, explains Caepro managing director John Roebuck. “The Ricardo brand already had a long and proud history and reputation in India but it was known primarily for its engine technology rather than for CAE software.” Initial efforts were thus put into the hosting of the first Ricardo Software conference in India, which was hosted twice at locations in Pune and Chennai in order to maximise attendance. For a first event it was a significant success, attracting over 60 attendees from 26 Indian automotive sector companies.
Having raised initial awareness however, it was important to enable potential customers to gain experience in the use of the products in order to facilitate genuine sales leads. “In our experience it is often difficult for Indian R&D departments to get budgets approved for training, and yet without this training it is almost impossible for them to properly evaluate new CAE products and applications,” continues Roebuck. “We decided to offer free training at Caepro with the aim of helping prospective customers familiarize themselves with the features of the software so that they can fully evaluate the benefits of the product before committing to purchase. Moreover, by taking this approach we help them to hit the ground running and immediately boost their productivity and effectiveness once they acquire a licence and start using it in their own company. This approach has had an immediate impact in stimulating sales of software licenses.” In addition to this upfront training, once licenses are purchased users also have access to support via Caepro engineers who are tasked as ‘product champions’ for one or more of the product range and who focus on developing their personal expertise in both the product and its applications.
In early 2009 the collaboration between Ricardo and Caepro moved one stage further with a technical support agreement between the two companies which now provides Caepro with a direct line of high level expert advice and assistance from Ricardo’s global powertrain engineering team. As such Caepro can offer consulting projects using its own engineers who can call upon support from Ricardo consulting wherever the scope of work is beyond their own competence. Customers can thus verify that software will meet their requirements without having to make the investment in time and money to buy and learn the software themselves.
In the next stage of development of Ricardo Software in India, Roebuck intends to focus on the significant academic market: “Our aim is to roll out the University Grant Programme in order to enable students to gain experience in the latest CAE products and technologies. In this way they will be more effective in their first jobs and hopefully, provide an excellent advertisement for Ricardo Software products. Moreover as CAE is relatively new to many companies in India, these same graduates are likely to have a significant influence on software purchasing decisions – so in effect we are helping to train our future customer base.”
Despite the challenging outlook in many parts of the world, India remains a very attractive and expanding marketplace for software and services. As the collaboration between Ricardo and Caepro moves towards completion of its second year of operation, the prospects look better than ever for the partners and their customers in India.
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