The money will be raised from internal accruals. The company is also in talks with a couple of financial institutions for raising money through private equity placements. Mr Vijay Singh Thakor, chairman, GEBBS Infotech Ltd, however, ruled out any plans to tap the public markets for this. "We have no plans for an IPO in the next 12 months." he said.

The competency center is primarily for development of Web-technology products in the area of B2B applications. The company's US subsidiary GEBBS Software International Inc has recently signed an MoU with CoreCommerce, developers of next generation e-business software, for which a product will be developed at these centers. As per the terms of the MoU, GEBBS is also the implementation partner at the client location.

The products for CoreCommerce for example are high end products meant for application where the transactions are large. The typical cost per site would be $1 million, and the main market is the US, explains Mr Thakor. Mumbai has been selected for developing the product as it will be cost-effective for the client and would also help GEBBS build expertise in Web technology. GEBBS is looking for clients both in the US and in India.The investment would cover the costs of hardware, software and communication facility between the development center in Mumbai and USA and towards meeting the working capital requirements.

"Our focus is on establishing alliances with technology companies, build expertise and help in implementation and thus reach the end customer" pointed out Mr Thakor.

Among the future plans of the company is to establish similar alliances with a focus on Web technology. The plans include providing a range of services that include defining IT strategy, designing the architecture for the system applications development.