Oracle aims to double customer base in India to 2,000 soon

In a country of India's size, getting another 1,000 customers should be "no big deal", said a top Oracle executive.

"We have got close to 1,000 customers in India. And we are expecting this to double as we go forward. With SaaS (software-as-a-service), we have the opportunity," Arun Khehar, Senior Vice President, Applications, Oracle ECMEA (Eastern Central Europe, Middle East & Africa), told IANS in an interview.

"In India, my prediction is in the next three years, as soon as the awareness increases and people start seeing the value, these numbers can multiply even further. A thousand people in India is no big deal," he said.

Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, Oracle on December 17 announced that Cloud Applications is now live on its "Gen 2" Cloud region in India.

The move is aimed at helping Oracle's existing and new customers, including those operating in sectors that are bound by the country's regulatory environment to store data within the borders of the country such as the public sector organisations or banking and telecom companies, take advantage of Oracle's full stack of offerings.

Khehar said that Oracle is now ready to target the whole market and all types of customers - be they small and medium-sized enterprises or large customers.

"We are targeting all segments. I have products for banking, retail, telco, manufacturing and the public sector, among others," he said.

Apart from India, Oracle now has 29 other data centres in the world.

"Having a data centre is a big deal. Millions of dollars go into making a data centre, in addition to investments in time, skill and other resources. If it was that easy, we would have had data centres in all the over 200 countries in which we operate," Khehar said, adding that much of the time and money goes into making the data centre secure.

"Because we come from a database and technology background, we understand security very well. We have been running governments and military and other operations worldwide for the last 30 plus years. We have used our experience to build products that have helped us in the Cloud arena," he said.

Oracle's new customers in India include the Adani Group, Apollo Tyres, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Aurobindo Pharma, Bajaj Electricals, Bajaj Finance, Bharti Airtel, Century Textiles, Cure.fit, Dalmia Group, Edelweiss Financial Services, Gangaram Hospitals, Grasim (Aditya Birla Group), IDFC First Bank, KLAY Chain of Preschools, Ola Cabs, OYO Rooms, Reliance Capital, Tata Sons, Unilever and Yes Bank.

Oracle said its Cloud Applications business in India has been experiencing double digit growth for the past four years.

This month, it reported that its fiscal 2020 Q2 total revenues were $9.6 billion, up one per cent compared to Q2 last year.

Cloud Services and License Support revenues were $6.8 billion, while Cloud License and On-Premise License revenues were $1.1 billion.

According to a forecast by Gartner Inc, IT spending in India will total $94 billion in 2020, up from $88.5 billion in 2019, which is an increase of 6.6 per cent.

Strong growth in total software spending will be driven by enterprise application software which is forecast to grow 17 per cent in 2020.

"None of our competitors have a data centre that gives a full stack. We have about 600 applications on the Cloud," Khehar said.

Oracle earlier this month named ex-Infosys CEO and founder and CEO of the AI company Vianai Systems, Vishal Sikka, to its Board of Directors.

Asked whether Sikka's inclusion to the company's board would help it expand its business in India, Khehar, on a lighter note, said: "I am sure he will."