Ireland-based company eyes IT, budget hotel foray

KOLKATA: Cordia Group, a Belfast-based hospitality and property development group, is eyeing India as a lucrative market. Apart from plans to set up budget hotels across the country, the group’s software services arm, Cordia Technologies, is looking to sell its software products.

Spun off as a separate company last year, Cordia Technologies, specialises in software for the hospitality industry. It has developed a unique real-time HR package in collaboration with Radiante Software, a small software outfit based in Kolkata. Cordia which has already implemented the package across its five properties in Belfast, is now targeting big hotel chains across India to market the product.

Shyamal Baksi, director, Cordia Technologies told ET, “Being in the hospitality business ourselves, we know the exact problems faced by hoteliers and have designed this software to address just those issues.” Little wonder, the software industry places such high weightage on domain knowledge.

While there are a few software products targeted at the hospitality industry, Mr Baksi claims this is the most effective and comprehensive one, given that it offers real time updates on man management costs. In effect, the Cordia software product can trigger payrolls on a minute-to-minute basis and integrate things like stock control and roster management.

“This leads to effective man management. And, given that HR accounts for about 35% of a hotelier’s costs, monitoring such costs can cut down overall input costs significantly,” said Mr Baksi.

He added Cordia Technologies will later be offering more software packages aimed at other critical aspects of the hospitality industry, which can be plugged into existing hotel packages. Cordia Technologies is now ready to repeat its success by rolling out more such products. “On the anvil are similar products for other segments of the service industry including hospitals and airlines,” added Mr Baksi.

Apart from its own product, Cordia will also be marketing products of Dutch company, Brilliant Hotelsoftware in South Asia and serve as their headquarters for the Asia-Pacific region. As part of a reciprocal arrangement, the Dutch company will sell Cordia software through its global chain.