Nishar, who was in Chennai for the official opening of the company's new corporate office and development centre, asserted that the company was studying the possibility of introducing an employee stock option scheme this year.

"We have planned the size and scale of the projects handled by the company with a view to ultimately list the company and all efforts will be made to bring the company to this level soon," he replied in answer to a question on whether the company would consider listing on the Nasdaq and local stock exchanges. He clarified that for now the company was a closely-held company, but was expanding very fast and so listing would be done within a few years.

Company managing director GS Krishnamoorthy said the company would be focussing on web-enabling E-Commerce applications in the next three years asit was aware that if one was not in E-Commerce then one must be "out of the IT business" in future.

The company will be focussing on niche areas like enterprise resource planning (ERP), EMU and E-Commerce in the years ahead. A strategy will be formed to tackle these special areas of IT business in the next three years. On ERP, the focus would be on service industries like insurance, banking, finance and education and the company has already signed a memorandum of understanding with People's Soft for this purpose.

Both Atul Nishar and Krishnamoorthy reiterated that HISL will be putting significant stress on projects in these niche markets so that growth goals of doubling turnover every year is maintained. Last year, the company had done business worth $10 million and this year it expects to double the volume to 20 million. The strategy being planned is to double turnover every year so that by year 2000 the company touches in excess of $100 million.

The company's new corporate office in Chennai wasinaugurated on Monday. It is also targeting the coveted SEI/CMM level 1V by year 2000.

According to Krishnamoorthy, the company intends to improve its credibility by going in for this international certification. It has appointed KPMG Peat Marwick as its consultants for this purpose.

Also the plan is to induct fresh software talent and take the total employee strength from 350 now to 1,000 by the year 2000.