"Currently, telecom and financial services constitute around 40 per cent of our revenue. In the next one year, we hope to raise it to over 60 per cent. Our decision to be more proactive in these segments is primarily because there is plenty of opportunity in the US market," he told eFE.

TechSpan, set up with funding from Goldman Sachs and Walden International, is into various horizontal segment needs like dynamic pricing practices, e-Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), Enterprise Information Protocols (EIP) and wireless-enabled business processes.

"We are not doing mere software development or coding. We locate the bottlenecks of the business operation of the company and sit with the company people to find out the exact solution. Thus our solutions leverage Internet and e-commerce activities to enhance business opportunities. This is not possible without a direct and close relationship with the companies," Mr Malhotra said.

Mr Malhotra said TechSpan has been able to send the right kind of message to the US customers. "Unlike other software companies, our cycle of development is typically six to 12 weeks. The industry standard is a minimum of 12 weeks," he said.

He claimed rival Infosys charges its foreign customers $68 per hour and HCL $75 per hour, while TechSpan charges $115 per hour. "So one can easily understand what kind of jobs we do and deliver," Mr Malhotra said.TechSpan wants to grab a substantial share of the telecom and financial services market in the US. The plan, according to Mr Malhotra, is to gradually go up in the value chain in the horizontal segment and do substantial work in the vertical segments.

"We will be present in various enterprise applications based on Internet and Internet-related commerce but we will execute those kind of jobs which will be very niche in the concerned areas," he said.

Currently, TechSpan employs 650 people out of which 550 work in the US market. At the Noida offshore factory, 100 people do the software development and customisation. Almost all its customers are from the US."The kind of money we charge, very few companies can afford to pay us. Right now our customer base is in the US. In future, we will be looking forward to the European market but still we have not fixed the exact timings," Mr Malhotra said.

About South Asia, Mr Malhotra's opinion is that the region is not ready to absorb the kind of telecom and e-commerce related technology solutions that are delivered by TechSpan.

"The Indian market as well as the South Asian market are still not attractive enough for companies like us to offer solutions. The market is an excellent place to source technology personnel to do offshore projects," Mr Malhotra said.