Realty software firm AMP Tech to expand Chennai facility

Chennai: US-based real estate software and services company AMP Technologies plans to increase its headcount at its Indian centre here ten-fold to 1,000 by 2015 with primary focus on the commercial real estate market back home, said a top company official.

"Our focus is the US market and not India. In addition to products we also have services division that caters to the commercial real estate market in the US out of Chennai," AMP's chairman and co-founder Sabeer Bhatia told reporters here Thursday.

According to him, the company will be growing its services business which in turn would also grow the software sales.

AMP Technologies offers software products that products business intelligence and analytics to large players in the commercial real estate segment, an IANS report said.

The company's services division offers services like lease administration, finance and accounting and due diligence for the commercial real estate players.

According to Bhatia who founded Hotmail and later sold it, he is the only sole financial investor in the company.

The idea to float the company came about when he and Neel Naicker, co-founder and CEO, were not able to get information on the commercial real estate market, Bhatia said.

He said the real estate players use software products that were developed several years back and the data generated by them are inadequate.

Naicker said the company offers three software products - AMP Intelligence (business analytics), AMP Lease (tracking of lease agreements during the entire lease life) and AMP Files that enables sharing of files.

Bhatia said the company's software extracts information from various sources and provides the same to the customers with analytics on varied devices- personal computer, laptop, tablet or mobile phone.

Speaking about the market, Bhatia said globally around $1 billion was spent on commercial real estate services alone and out of that nearly 50 percent was spent in the US.

Interestingly Naicker, with his roots here - as his grandparents were from the city - is coming to the city for the first time and for Bhatia, the visit here is after 24 years.

"The last time I came here was about 24 years back to get my visa to go to the US," Bhatia said.

In the US, he founded Hotmail which was later sold to Microsoft.