Founded in 1985, US-based Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC) entered the Indian market in the year 1994. Over the years of its presence in India, the company has come to offer software and services to manufacturers to help them meet globalisation needs, time-to-market and operational efficiency objectives of product development. Using the company's CAD and content and process management solutions, organisations in the industrial, high-tech, aerospace and defense, automotive, consumer and medical industries are able to support key business objectives and create innovative products that meet both customer needs and comply with industry regulations. Having over 3000 customers in India, the company on the global level, is the largest software company with business and R&D centres in Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune. Says Rohit Bidappa, senior marketing manager, PTC India, "We have a R&D centre in Pune. It is the largest R&D centre outside of Boston. The Pune centre could be marginally bigger." India is obviously an important market. "There is a total of 100 R&D engineers in India, including some 500 of these spread over client locations," adds Bidappa, drawing attention towards his company's global revenues, which are over US$ 1 billion. With a client base in India that includes industry majors like L&T and a large number of auto majors as well as suppliers, the emphasis at PTC currently is on predictive analysis and green product development. PTC acquired Relex, announces Rafiq Somani, Country Manager, PTC India. "The acquisition was in 2009 and the US-based Relex Software Corporation provides software and services for analysing design and field data in order to assist in evaluating and improving product reliability and safety," says Somani. Coming into play when the system fails to capture a bug or an anomaly, Relex products and services are used by thousands of engineers in a variety of businesses around the globe, including aerospace and defence, medical equipment, telecommunications, electronics and high-tech, automotive and industrial equipment. Privately held, and employing approximately 50 employees, the acquisition of Relex will help PTC to broaden its family of solutions to include product reliability in addition to environmental compliance. Touching upon the connection between Relex solutions and the auto industry, Rafiq says, "Toyota is now doing a Relex analysis. Until now Toyota was using in-house tools. Failure analysis with the use of our solutions enables savings in time and makes it failure proof, which is not always possible in a mechanical failure analysis." Automotive remains an important business. "Nearly 50 per cent of our business in India comes from auto," adds Somani. As far as the Indian auto industry is concerned, Tata Motors according to Rohit, is the biggest single licensed location client of PTC. "Tata Motors used Pro E for powertrain and chassis, including the Nano and the World Truck," avers Rafiq Somani.Turning to aerospace and shipbuilding, Somani announces that PTC is very big in this business. "We have Cadd5 software for shipbuilding." Delving into the nature of the software solutions offered by PTC, Somani remarks that companies can do dynamic reviews. "We have process templates depending on the application," he adds, "the products are the same." The products reduce cost by better automation, reduction in time-to-market and reduction in design cycle time. Elaborating that Windchill could enable communicative design review and project management between various locations spread far away, Rohit states that the market has moved up post October-November 2009. "OEMs stopped buying during recession. Tier 1 and suppliers lower down continued to buy. Tier suppliers usually buy for current and OE for their future need," opines Somani. Explaining that PTC is big in hi-tech and electronics, Rohit says that they are seeing an increasing demand for green product development solutions. In this direction, the company acquired InSight in mid-2009, which specialises in environmental regulatory compliance in product design. The proliferation of environmental regulations now affects how a product should be designed. And especially when the companies selling products to Europe and Asia are now required to provide evidence of compliance. InSight gives firms a way to do this. "Insight helps to control hardware material movement and tracking of carbon footprint," says Rohit. Going into details, Rafiq quips, "Aeroplane manufacturers are trying to reduce their carbon footprint anticipating priorities like less taxation or easier obtaining of landing rights. A lot of auto companies are also looking at green product development that would involve environmental standards like recyclability, RoHS, ELV, etc." With Windchill 10 round the corner, PTC in India is working on tapping various new market segments and further strengthening those where it already has a good presence - markets like infrastructure and EPC where Pro E and Windchill finds high acceptance. Having surpassed the global projections, growth with a 12 to 13 per cent year-on-year a usual phenomenon by now, PTC's strategy regarding a new product launch involves time spent on testing it before commercial release. Says Rafiq, "We now take 18 months over 12 months we used to take earlier. We also do beta testing with customers. This ensures better product validity". Clocking 75 per cent growth in the last quarter, PTC in India has changed the go to market model by employing a chain of network dealers. This would help the company to serve the mid-market more efficiently. "We could reach out mid-size and small customer," states Rohit Bidappa. With a 25/75 marketing model in place, 75 being the dealer/channel partner part, PTC in India currently employs ten channel partners and two distributors.