Australian tech group AAM to invest $10 million in India

(L to R) Mark R. Freeburn, Global CEO, AAM Group; Dr. Kambhampati Hari Babu, Member of Parliament; Srinivasa Murthy, Founder & CEO, SkyeIT Solutions

The $60 million AAM Group (Australian Aerial Mapping), a global geospatial services company today announced its entry into India through a 50:50 joint venture with the Hyderabad-based Skye IT Solutions.

The group—that provides aerial and surveying solutions in Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia and Africa—will invest $10 million in India over the next three years. It expects its India operations (AAM India) to generate a revenue of $50 million in three years and double it in another two.

Mark Freeburn, Global CEO, AAM Group, said that while it is an ambitious target, the geospatial market in India has a growth potential of $3 billion. Freeburn’s optimism is also based on AAM’s history of revenue growth. “We have seen our global revenue double every three years,” he said.

Srinivas Murthy Banda, who heads Skye IT Solutions, will be the President and CEO of AAM India. “The group will take care of the aerial surveys and we will do the back-end processing work,” he said.

AAM is keen on assisting the government in its project of creating 100 smart cities by 2020. It will provide 3D models similar to those it produced for Singapore, Sydney and Hong Kong and produce solutions on infrastructure, urban design/planning, land record modernisation, etc. The group has been in talks with senior government officials. “Given the focus on smart city planning, we are looking at a huge growth opportunity,” Murthy said. 

Besides the government, AAM India will work with private companies in the areas of highway management, power line management etc. “We will go beyond smart cities and look at smart environment at work, smart agriculture and smart infrastructure. There is a lot of demand for crop analysis, so we will look at these things as well,” the CEO added.

Mathew Mooney, director, AAM Group, said they had been looking to enter India for several years now. “We have been in talks with Srinivas for over a year. We felt this is the right time to look at India because the PM, Narendra Modi, has been talking of using geospatial technology,” said Mooney.

AAM India will employ about a thousand people in a year's time. It will initially be based in Hyderabad.