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Silverline makes magazine ranking for third year in a row

Nitish S Rele

Silverline Technologies Ltd, a global software services company, was recently ranked 240 by the biweekly magazine VARBusiness, a premier source of strategic technology and business direction for the architects of the new economy.

This is the third year in a row that Silverline, which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in June (symbol: SLT), was named to the list.

"We are excited and happy to be on the VARBusiness 500 list again," said Shankar Iyer, chief executive officer and president of Silverline Technologies. "It's a well-read magazine, which has covered the computer industry for a long time."

An international software solutions provider, Silverline employs 1,656 people, of whom 1,150 are based in Madras and Bombay. The Piscataway, New Jersey, firm had revenues of $87 million last year.

Silverline Technologies offers IT solutions and outsourcing services with a focus on e-business, CRM, legacy transformation and application maintenance. "Acquiring and maintaining customers is our most important objective," said Iyer. "The job of any business is to make the customer successful and we continue to focus on that aspect."

Iyer admitted disappointment with the performance of the Silverline stock on the NYSE. "But I am not concerned," he added. "It's important that we offer a lot of stock options. The reason we went public was to spread ourselves in other regions of the world. Eighty percent of our business comes from outside of the United States."

Silverline has facilities in Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Egypt. Iyer plans to grow through acquisitions the rest of 2000 and then focus on growth in Europe and the Far East in 2001.

Iyer grew up in Vikhroli, a suburb of Bombay. He graduated from Bombay University with a bachelor's degree in science and a master's in business. Thereafter he joined Voltas as a management trainee in the company's refrigerator business group. His responsibilities included management of the sales force for a section of Bombay. He was also responsible for co-ordinating strategies with the marketing, production and commercial departments.

In 1990, Iyer joined the Silverline Group as operations manager in the export division. He was the liaison between the Indian and the US office. His responsibilities included resourcing, recruiting and allocating technical resources for various project assignments in the US.

In August 1990, Iyer became the operations manager in the United States for Infocom Inc. His responsibilities involved human resources, sales and marketing. As part of the senior management team, he was responsible for increasing the revenues of Infocom to $5 million in two years.

He was vice-president of the West Coast for Silverline Industries Inc as well as chief operating officer of Silverline Technologies before coming the CEO and president in 1999.

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