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Leads me to believe there is significant progress ahead.
Castleton expansion in India provides strategic scalability to enhance services
Castleton Technology plc has expanded its operation with new offices in India, which officially opened on 10th December 2018. Operating from Bangalore in the south and Baroda in the north, Castleton India will enhance the company’s capability for development and testing of new social housing software solutions, with a team of 16 people across the two offices.
The move will extend Castleton’s existing ‘bandwidth’, complementing its UK operations and providing additional resources to enable new solutions to be brought to market more quickly while also improving customer response times by delivering enhanced functionality across existing solutions.
Commenting on the launch of Castleton India, CEO Dean Dickinson said, “This move represents a strategic alliance that will add reliable scalability to our UK based organisation. The development team at Castleton UK have been working with the team in India under a collaboration agreement since March 2018 and together produced our latest offering, Castleton.DIGITAL, which was launched successfully earlier this month. We are all very excited about this expansion of our business and look forward to forthcoming projects already in the pipeline.”
Mukesh Patel and Sushil Tasgaonkar, experienced and well-respected figures in the software sector in India, will be respectively Non-executive Chairman and CTO & Managing Director of Castleton Indian operations. Both worked alongside Dean Dickinson over a number of years before Dickinson joined Castleton, and together with Ian Niblock, Director of Development & Product Strategy at Castleton in the UK, represent a trusted team able to deliver on Castleton’s strategic objectives.
With over 600 existing customers, Castleton provides solutions to housing associations seeking to streamline the management of their properties, tenants and workflow. “What sets us apart is our integrated technology to empower our housing providers,” Dickinson concludes. “Where others provide either managed IT services or software solutions, Castleton deliver the most comprehensive set of solutions and services, that interface with customers’ existing systems. That’s what we’re known for and that’s what we’re investing in with Castleton India. It’s an exciting time for the company and we welcome our new colleagues to the Castleton community!”
This is a substantive new development beyond paid collaboration, impacting on the company structure, it's ability to develop new and update existing products, and the speed with which they can be brought to market. I am bemused that in the company's view it does not warrant specific notification to shareholders. Like them, I look forward to seeing the results flow through ( and into the accounts ) - "We are all very excited about this expansion of our business and look forward to forthcoming projects already in the pipeline.”
Maybe unduly cynical, but it's possible a potential rise in share price would be more 'beneficial' all round next financial year. Just a passing thought really.
Extending on my last, I've often thought that Kestrel, by trading as they do, play a key role in maintaining the price at what might be seen as an acceptable level.
We all theorise from time to time. But with established Castleton the reality is that the working share price will ultimately depend upon the published results. As I have said before, it is in that context that I believe next year will prove particularly beneficial, consequent upon reduced outgoings, and the benefits of the recent, and now forthcoming products, and managed services strategy flowing through into the accounts.
In relation to the Indian development offices, it can only be that Mr Dickinson's previous experience with the individuals concerned, and the .Digital success is such that there is proven advantage to achieving first mover advantage on new solutions ( and improved ongoing service ) by bringing their collaborative partners in house.
They must therefore be seeing encouraging results from the collaborative period..
Without knowing what the future holds, and without more information, I imagine the two offices are ' inherited' from the existing set-up, with developers working at each, and the geography within India so far as Castleton is concerned is unimportant just at the moment.
As you say, things are being 'tee'd up' for next year.