L&T Infotech bags two Railways’ contracts

[Kalyan]

L&T Infotech, which competes with larger rivals Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys, has won new outsourcing contracts from Indian Railways for building and deploying enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions.

These contracts, the first among a series of over Rs 100 crore projects being planned by the Indian Railways, will help one of the most complex and largest railway systems in the world automate its freight and locomotive management systems.

L&T Infotech has won the two turnkey ERP projects for computerising the maintenance of rolling assets at Delhi and Lucknow. The Center for Railway Information System (CRIS) is the nodal agency co-ordinating these projects.

These new contracts will help the L&T arm to establish a track record in implementing government projects. This is a key criteria to be successful in the government sector, where well-entrenched players such as TCS, Wipro and HCL Infosystems are present.

"We won both projects against stiff competition from the major IT firms. The tender for the contract was put out seven months ago — we expect more decisions from the Rs 100 crore allocation to be finalised in the current calendar year," said Sudip Banerjee, CEO, L&T Infotech. The company has started becoming active in the domestic market since 2009. So far, it has won projects worth about Rs 50 crore in the domestic market, Mr Banerjee said