Mr Arun Jain

T.E. Raja Simhan

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Chennai, June 29 Mr Arun Jain, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Polaris Software Lab Ltd, saw his gross remuneration come down by 27 per cent to Rs 85 lakh in 2007-08 compared with Rs 1.08 crore in the previous year. This includes Rs 20 lakh (Rs 51.25 lakh) towards bonus, which was calculated based on performance criteria determined by the company’s shareholders at the annual general meeting held in August 2006.

Some of the company’s directors too got lower commission in 2007-08. For instance, the commission of Mr Abhay Agarwal dropped to Rs 3.50 lakh during the year compared with Rs 4.98 lakh in the previous year. Similarly, Mr Arvind Kumar’s commission dropped to Rs 3.50 lakh (Rs 4.63 lakh). No stock options grants were provided during 2007-08 for directors compared with 10,000 given to six of them in the previous year, says the company’s 2007-08 annual report.

For the year ended March 31, 2008, Polaris’ net profit was Rs 73 crore (Rs 101 crore) on revenues of Rs 1,117 crore (Rs 1,038 crore).

A notable feature in 2007-08 was increased profitability in Polaris’ subsidiary that provides software for the retail industry. Polaris Retail InfoTech Ltd (PRIL) achieved a net profit of Rs 2.02 crore (Rs 78 lakh).

PRIL, through its products Retail Excel and Smart Store, has reached to 15,000 point of sale counters across India. It is foraying into international markets starting with West Asia and Africa, Mr Jain said.

Polaris Retail won new clients such as Vishal Retail, Godrej Agrovet, REI Agro, Masper, DSCL Hariyali Kisan Bazar and Indian Terrain. “We expanded Polaris Retail to the West Asian market last year and this year, we are looking to expand PRIL to Asia Pacific and Africa markets as well,” Mr Jain told Business Line.

The Intellect platform contributed around 23 per cent of annual revenues. This is against the product business of more than 30 per cent projected in 2002 when Polaris and OrbiTech Solutions, a Citibank technology group company, were merged. Launched in 2004, Intellect was the enhanced version of Polaris’ OrbiOne suite of banking products. OrbiOne was the proprietary product of OrbiTech.

In the last five years, the ‘Intellect business’ has grown to Rs 220 crore from Rs 60 crore.

Mr Jain said post OrbiTech merger, Polaris appointed McKinsey to understand the global market players and ‘right positioning’ of the product in the market place. The consultant recommended that ‘Legacy Modernisation’ (migration of legacy systems to modern technology) offered a good business opportunity as banks and financial institutions would need to spend on this.

On the basis of the recommendation, Polaris shifted its focus to position Intellect among top 20 global banks in the world to create “lighthouse implementations” — Intellect implementations in leading banks — such as Lloyds Bank in UK, National Bank of Abu Dhabi in West Asia, Citibank in London, Deutsche Leasing in Germany and Shinsei in Japan.

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