According to SDRC Asia-Pacific director Kin Lai, a manifold increase in sizeof operations had become imperative given the kind of work that was beingundertaken at the centre.

The Pune centre, which commenced operations in January this year, is theonly R&D facility set up by the company outside the US. It is developingcritical pieces of software for the future product releases of SDRCworldwide.

The company already has permission from the Foreign Investment PromotionBoard for investing $5 million in its Indian subsidiary, according tocountry manager India Narendar Reddy. The R&D centre presently has 25development professionals. The number is likely to touch 100 within ayear.

SDRC (Structural Dynamics Research Corporation) India has also chalked out amajor plan to set up CAD/CAM training centres in association with severalreputed educational establishments like the Indian Institutes of Technologyand engineering and design colleges.

In the last few months, SDRC has opened three centres in Coimbatore, Chennaiand IIT, Delhi. It is talking to many other organisations for setting uptraining centres on a franchisee basis.

"SDRC software-based CAD/CAM courses are already offered in NIIT and otherinstitutes. Besides, 70 engineering colleges and 150 polytechnics also havebought software from us for training," said Reddy.

"CAD/CAM being critical for the engineering design departments, it will bebetter if the students are exposed to these technologies in the beginningitself. So we are also persuading some of them to incorporate our modules inthe curriculum," said Lai.

The client base of SDRC is also slated to go up from the present 550 to 600by the year-end, according to him. About 35 per cent of its revenue accruesfrom the small and medium enterprise sales.

The company does almost 60 per cent of its business through channel partnerslike NIIT and Tata Elxsi in the high-end segment and five others for thelow-end solutions. Its Indian operations comprise close to five per cent ofits worldwide revenue.

The $400-million SDRC is No.3 in the worldwide CAD/CAM/CAE market. In theprocess of increasing its Asia-Pacific market reach, SDRC had earlier thismonth relocated its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Japan, a market whichreturns between 15 to 20 per cent of its global revenue. It claims to be theNo.1 player in the Indian and Japanese markets.