Autodesk banking on India's booming infrastructure potential to boost revenue

BENGALURU, 30 Dec, 2014: 3D design, engineering and entertainment software company Autodesk is banking on India's booming infrastructure potential to boost its revenue and presence in the country over the next few years. "Our software can design at city scale and since the new government aims to build huge amount of infrastructure, it plays very well to our strengths," chief executive Carl Bass told ET at Autodesk University, the annual conference for the softmaker, held in Las Vegas.

In the 2014 budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the government will provide funds for financing long-term infrastructure projects, boosting confidence in the sector. Union minister Nitin Gadkari had earlier said that he targets developing 25 kilometres of roads per day. The managing director for Autodesk India, Pradeep Nair, said "the new government is focussed on execution and showing tangible results, which we are very excited about."

Much of the growth in the world's construction and manufacturing is happening in emerging economies including China, India and Brazil. Autodesk's flagship AutoCAD software is used by construction, engineering and infrastructure companies to design, build out and simulate real-world performance of products. Last month, Autodesk reported that its emerging countries' revenue in the third quarter rose 13%, primarily boosted by India, China and Brazil.

Separately, Autodesk said that it has received more than 400 applications for its global $100-million (about Rs 614 crore) Spark Investment Fund, which intends to support 3D printing startups. Autodesk's Spark is an open 3D printing software platform that helps hardware manufacturers, software developers, materials scientists and product designers come together and benefit from the technology.

The company compared its 3D software platform to Google's Android and said it will be free and open. It plans to publicly launch the platform in the next couple of months and hopes to emulate the same success as Google.

Courtesy: The Economic Times