In fact, the company expects South Asia to turn in revenues of US$1.2 million for the year ending March 2001, and US$3.5 million the year after.
"I don't think this is a modest projection given that we have just set up our regional headquarters in Singapore last August," Brio regional manager (South Asia) Doug Bellin told Singapore.CNET.com in a phone interview this morning.
Bellin also does not see a slowdown in the purchase of Brio's business intelligence software, as "companies will need this tool for optimizing sales as they go through the tough times."
Brio provides software that helps companies retrieve and analyze information more effectively. Its flagship product is Brio ONE, which includes software modules such as Brio.Enterprise, Brio.Report, Brio.Portal, and Brio.Inform.
For the third quarter ending December last year, Brio saw sales of US$206,000 from the region, a 69 percent jump from the same period in 1999. Singapore's revenues grew more than three-fold to US$90,000 in the quarter from US$25,000 the year before.
At present, the company's biggest markets in the region are Singapore, Taiwan and Korea, Bellin noted. Customers include IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Accenture, ABN AMRO, Citibank, Singapore Airlines and Singapore Power.
Looking forward, Bellin expects growth to come from selling more modules to existing customers as well as to new ones.
Brio also plans to increase its headcount in Singapore to 10 by year end from the current one-man team, he said, adding that the company might set up its second Asian office outside of Singapore next year.
In an earlier Bloomberg report, analysts said that Brio had in recent months lost global market share to rivals Cognos Inc and Business Objects SA, both of which have benefited from Brio's failure to close sales in the current fiscal year.
Brio's global sales rose 14 percent to US$38.9 million in the third quarter from US$34.2 million in the year-ago period. The company made a loss of US$260,000 in the quarter compared with profit of US$3.1 million a year earlier.
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