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@Road expands in Chennai
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Krish Panu
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@Road, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARDI), a global provider of Mobile Resource Management (MRM) solutions, announced here the inauguration of its expanded operations and facilities in Chennai' s ELNET Software City by Richard Haynes, Consul General, U S Consulate, Chennai, and Vivek Harinarain, Secretary to the Government, Information Technology Department.
In its five years of operation in Chennai, @Road has grown from a few engineers to more than 100 IT professionals working in functional areas like R&D, quality assurance, technical support, business development and marketing.
Krish Panu, president and CEO of @Road, said: "We realised the potential of Chennai as an excellent location to base our Asian operations five years ago. Since then, our Chennai team has been instrumental in developing key software and service platforms that enable @Road to be a vendor of choice in providing MRM solutions to leading enterprises in telecommunications, utilities, facilities management, transportation and other vertical markets."
 He further added: "Today, as a result of our global growth, we've expanded our Chennai facilities, operations and staff and plan to grow them even further as we continue our global expansion initiatives."
According to Rajan Aiyer, India Country Manager for @Road: "@Road has invested more than Rs 10 crore in its Chennai operations and enjoys more than 10,000 sq ft of prime office space. Current plans call for continued office expansion in Chennai and addition of several hundred professionals as @Road revenues grow and demand for MRM and field automation services accelerate worldwide."
 @Road is a company that has been profitable since July 2003. Total revenues in 2004 increased 19 per cent to $ 75.2 million from $ 63.4 million in 2003. Service revenues also grew 19 per cent to $ 58.8 million in 2004 from $ 49.6 million in 2003. The company's balance sheet as of December 31, 2004, included $ 118 million of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.
As a leading provider of MRM solutions, @Road can offer businesses the visibility into their mobile resources that they want and need, in order to meet and exceed customer expectations while helping to streamline service delivery processes. @Road seeks to accomplish this by enabling the convergence of wireless communication, location-based technologies, hosted or installed software applications, transaction processing and the Internet.
 With the company's recent acquisition of Vidus Limited, @Road can also provide businesses with the power to synchronise their mobile resources. taskforceTM, an intelligent and automated software solution by Vidus, is designed to enable companies to provide service on demand, accommodate customer preferences and reliably meet customer commitments by overcoming the complexity and unpredictability of scheduling in the service delivery environment. The combination of the Vidus taskforce solution with the @Road family of MRM solutions can offer businesses complete end-to-end MRM solutions for optimised service delivery.
"As we continue to create new value-added services for our customers and expand our services internationally, we look to our operations in Chennai to play an important role in our growth strategy," Panu concluded.
An additional facility is expected to be put up in Chennai with an almost equal investment of Rs 10 crore, as the operations in this city could increase in size several times over.
For details, please visit the web site at www.road.com
R Rangaraj
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