India is a giant in software services, thanks in great degree to the
extraordinary vision and work of NR Narayana Murthy, who retired this
month from the company he founded, Infosys Technologies. There are
skeptics who say that India will never be able to overcome this services
mindset and move on to develop creative global products and platforms.
We
don't share that scepticism. We believe that the success of the
software services industry has created talent that now has the desire,
confidence and expertise to build global technology products.
Thousands
of such initiatives are in the works around the country. Here's we
bring to you a sample of these, some that have reached a degree of
maturity, others that have seen amazing success in a short period.
Founders: Arvind Rao & Mouli Raman
Founded in 2000, in California, but moved to Bangalore two years later.
Business:
Mobile value-added services like ringtones, ring back tones, alerts,
voice-based searches. More recently, introduced innovative products like
Karaophone that allows users to play karaoke with their social networks
via mobile or landline phones, and RCS Phonebook, an interactive user
address book that synchronises all contact information, including
friends on social networks, into one central location for easy
management and live access. The company has onsite presence in 52
countries and boasts of 105 million unique users every month. Rao, 52,
who was in the venture capital industry in the US prior to forming
On-Mobile, says the company's strength has been its risk sharing and
joint work with operators to make the products a success, instead of
simply licensing its technology.
Mouli, 42,
who worked for many years in Infosys, says OnMobile frequently receives
requests from developed market operators to teach them the things being
done in Asia. "They are hit by Google and Apple (app stores), and they
believe we can help them counter this." The company is now focused on
providing multilingual content.
Customers: Most of the Indian telecom operators. Vodafone uses them globally; Telefonica of Spain
Revenue:
Rs 537 crore in 2010-11; international revenues contribute over 27%.
It's not official, but it's possible that OnMobile is today the world's
biggest company providing mobile value-added services.
Founders: Sanjay Nayak, Arnob Roy, Kumar Sivarajan
Founded in 2000, in Bangalore
Business:
Developing intelligent network technologies, networks that not only
transport data between two points, but also do it at the precise speeds
that customers require, rerouting traffic when any one lane is choked or
disrupted, and clean up disrupted signals. "It's like a bus that
behaves according to the nature of its occupants. If it knows that its
occupants are students, then it behaves in a particular way, and if it
knows they are tourists, it behaves differently," says Nayak.
Customers:
Tejas solutions are deployed in all major telecom networks in India. It
also sells in 60 countries. South Korea, which has the most advanced
wireless broadband network in the world, has its backhaul (intermediate
links) running partly on Tejas equipment.
Revenue:
Over Rs 750 crore. Tejas was initially funded by Gururaj Despande, and
then by Intel Capital, Mayfield Fund, Battery Ventures, Goldman Sachs
and Sandstone Capital.
Founder: Yusuf Motiwala
Founded in 2007, in Bangalore
Business:
Browser-based voice application. Unlike Skype, this requires no
downloads or installations. Users just need to open a browser, log in
and start talking. Motiwala, 38, provides the application programming
interfaces so that anybody can integrate the voice application into
their browsers. TringMe handles the backend network, technology and data
centre, and charges for each minute of call that passes through the
system. The technology also allows communication amongst multiple voice
sources -- Web, mobile phone, instant messenger. "Skype has the first
mover advantage. But we have significant advantages over them," says
Motiwala, who previously worked in Lucent Technologies and Texas
Instruments and who started the business with Rs 5 lakh.
Customers: Over 120 enterprises, including IBM, Infosys and AOL
Revenue:
Not available. But TringMe handles over 42 million minutes of calls per
month, and serves over 11 million users. The call minutes doubled in
the last one year. Winner of Nasscom's most innovative startup 2009
award.
Founder: Varun Shoor
Founded in 2001, in Jalandhar
Business:
Helpdesk solutions to deliver better customer support. The company's
flagship product brings all communications and support channels --
tickets, email, live chat, self-service, calls and remote desktop
support on one platform. Another product is a comprehensive live chat
and visitor monitoring solution that helps deliver real-time support.
"Using
our products, one can centrally manage all customer support channels.
Our tools empower employees," says Shoor, who developed the technology
and started the business when he was only 17.
Customers: Over, 30,000, including GE, NASA, Virgin Mobile, FedEx, SEGA and ICANN.
Revenue: It's in multiple million dollars.
Founder: Rohit Singal
Founded in 2006, in Bangalore
Business:
App developer. The company has developed over 300 apps, twenty of these
are in the top 100 in leading app stores. It has apps for iPhone, iPad,
Android, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Windows 7 mobile platform. Sourcebits
most popular apps include Robokill, Knocking Live, Daily Deeds, Night
Stand, Skyfire, and Beast Farmer.
Night
Stand, an app which converts the iPhone/iPad into an alarm clock,
reached the number two spot for all-time top download on the iTunes App
Store within four days of its release and has been downloaded more than 3
million times. Knocking Live, the first live streaming app for iOS, has
more than 2.3 million downloads. Singal, 35, is targeting the gaming
space next.
Customers: GE, Coca Cola, Sling Media , P&G , Hershey's , MIT Sloan School of Management
Revenue: $6.5 million in 2010-11 Sequoia Capital and IDG Ventures India invested $10 million in Sourcebits in May.
Founders: Sriram V Iyer & Arun Samudrala
Founded in 2009, in Bangalore
Business:
Mobile platform development. The company's flagship product is
UConnect, a connection management solution; if cellphone traffic on an
LTE network is clogged, it offloads traffic to another available network
such as Wi-Fi, so that the connection is not cut. UManage is a device
management solution, helps device vendors (USB dongles, mobile phones,
tablets, even TVs and set-top-boxes ) to fix/configure their devices
even after it reaches the customer. Currently, the only way to upgrade
is by connecting them to a PC or taking it to a service station. "There
have been even instances of large scale recalls of devices to address
problems. With our solution, such recalls will become unnecessary," says
Iyer, 32, who previously worked with Samudrala, also 32, in Beceem
Communications. Customers: Broadcom. Working with two of the world's
leading semiconductor companies/ODMs to bundle UConnect with their LTE
devices.
Revenue: Rs 1.5 crore expected this
year. Finalist at Qualcomm QPrize India 2010, finalist at Microsoft
BizSpark India Startup Challenge 2011, finalist at YourStory.in's
TechSparks 2011.
Founder: Suresh Sambandam
Founded in 2003, in Chennai
Business:
Orangescape was one of the early entrants into cloud computing. Its
platform as-a-service product allows businesses to build customised
applications using a visual modeling interface. These applications may
either be deployed locally or on public clouds -- the Google App Engine,
Microsoft's Azure, IBM's Smart Cloud or Amazon's EC2. Sambandam
recognised the importance of partners early on, and today works with
application developers and system integrators like TCS, Wipro, 3i
Infotech, Mphasis and L&T Infotech. "One of the most important
things for a startup to survive is to start selling at the early
stages," says Sambandam, who previously worked with HP and Selectica.
Customers: Unilever, Pfizer, Citigroup, Astra Zeneca, Ford, among others.
Revenue:
Over $1 million. TiEcon 2011 recognised it among the top 50 global
startups. CRN magazine featured Orangescape among the global top 20
coolest cloud platforms. Nasscom recognised it as a top IT innovator in
India for two successive years.
Founders: Abdullah Khan & Mohamed Saliya
Founded in 1999, in Bangalore
Business:
Embedded hardware, semiconductor platforms. The company provides
integrated solutions for developing innovative products or systems in
the areas of data communications, consumer electronics and multimedia.
Khan previously worked with Tata Elxsi and CDoT, and Saliya in Philips
Semiconductors and ISRO.
Customers: GE Healthcare, Honeywell, Continental, Visteon , Japan railways, Panasonic , and many more
Revenue:
Not disclosed. Microsoft awarded iWave the Windows Embedded Partner
Excellence Award in 2009. The award recognises visionaries and
organizations around the world that use technology in an innovative and
creative manner.
Founder: Subash Menon
Founded in 1992, in Bangalore
Business:
Products that allow communications service providers to improve their
operational efficiency and deliver enhanced service experiences to
subscribers. It has solutions for revenue assurance, cost management,
fraud management, provisioning automation, data integrity management and
more. The company started by providing fraud management solutions and
its product Nikira became the No.1 fraud management solution in the
world. A series of global acquisitions has enabled Menon, who started
the firm with a Rs 20,000 loan from a former employer, to offer a wider
portfolio of solutions
Customers: 16 of the
top 20 wireless operators worldwide and 26 of the world's 50 biggest
telecommunications service providers. The company has more than 300
installations across 70 countries. Almost all telecom service providers
in India are customers. T-Mobile, Verizon, Telefonica, Comcast, Sprint
are among customers in the Americas.
Revenue:
Rs 492 crore in 2010-11. Awarded the Global Telecoms Business
Innovation Award 2011 along with Swisscom for the industry's first
successful Risk Reward Sharing model for fraud management.
Founder: Pallav Nadhani
Founded in 2001, in Kolkata, when Nadhani was 16
Business:
Charting products. Nandhani had begun by writing a charting component
using Macromedia Flash, which enabled animation and interactivity in
charts. He also wrote articles detailing this work for a technology
publication that got him $1,500. "That became the seed capital for my
company," he says. His biggest learning has been that customers do not
look for features, they look for benefits. The company has been
profitable from day one. Barring some advertising in technology
magazines in the US and Europe, marketing has been through free online
options and customer recommendations.
Customers: 18,000 customers, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, IBM
Revenue: $4.5 million in 2010-11. Winner of the Deloitte Fast 50 India 2009 award and Nasscom's emerging company 2009 award.
Founders: Saju Pillai & Aaditya Sood
Founded in 2009, in Bangalore
Business:
Data centre management products. Automates processes in the data
centres so that systems work faster, with fewer faults and greater
security. And everything can be viewed and managed from a single window.
Competitors include BMC, HP, CA. "But we do it better than them. We
have competed against them and we have won every time," says Pillai, 31,
who together with Sood, 30, had previously worked in Oracle.
Customers:
Six customers, including Astra Zeneca, UK, Endeavour Tech, one of the
world's biggest stock exchanges, and one of the world's biggest banks.
ISV to RedHat, VMware, Microsoft
Revenue: Not disclosed. Finalist at YourStory .in's TechSpark 2011.
Founder: Manav Garg
Founded in 2004, in Bangalore
Business:
Products to manage risks in commodity trading. Commodities markets are
notoriously volatile. A bad crop in Brazil or Vietnam, currency
fluctuations, geopolitical situations --- anything can affect an
organisation's ability to deliver. "A Nestle cannot tell customers they
don't have coffee to sell. They have to manage country risks, quality
risks, risk of shipments, risk of suppliers, to ensure they have enough
coffee all the time," says Garg, 37. Garg saw the opportunity for such a
software when he worked with Singapore-based G Premjee Group in their
commodities trading business in the late 1990s.
Customers:
AWB (formerly Australian Wheat Board); Louis Dreyfus, Geneva; CHS, an
US agricultural cooperative; New Boliden, a Swedish mining and smelting
company; and more.
Revenue: $10 million. Winner of the Nasscom Innovation 2009 award. Was in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 for India in 2009.
Founder: Atul Jalan
Founded in 2004, in Bangalore
Business:
Analytics products for the retail industry. The products analyse
customer behaviour, merchandising, supply chain performance, supplier
performance and a host of other parameters and help retailers decide
where to set up a store, what kind of products to stock in a store,
where to stock them, which products should be placed together to
optimise sales, identify the right promotions. "These are decisions that
were earlier taken on the basis of gut feelings and hearsay," says
Jalan, 41.
Customers: Over 76 customers, most
in the $1-20 billion revenue range, including McDonald's, Prada, Bally,
SM Group, Haggen, Crocs, Ecco and Robinson's.
Revenue: Approx $18 million IDG Ventures India, DFJ ePlanet Ventures and Fidelity International have invested in Manthan.
Founder: Subbu Murugan
Founded in 2006, in Chennai
Business:
Video management and publishing platform. It's a platform for video
interstitials. Its video enables your websites, and allows you to easily
organize, customise, publish, distribute, analyse and monetize your
video assets. "The market for internet advertising in India is nearly Rs
1,000 crore; 8% of that is dedicated to video advertising," says
Murugan, 39, who did an MS in computer information systems in Georgia
State university, US. The company has a presence in 15 countries, mostly
in Europe and the Americas.
Customers: Many Indian publications and advertiser clients including Fox Networks, YuMe and Jivox.
Revenue: Murugan does not talk about this. But he says 45% of the revenues come from outside India.
Founders: Aneesh Reddy & Krishna Mehra
Founded in 2008, in Kolkata, but soon shifted to Bangalore
Business:
Capillary's solution captures data about those who come to shop in a
store or for a brand, analyses them, and offers them discounts in
real-time. "Even as they are at the billing counter, they would be sent a
discount message on their cellphone based on their age, past purchases,
etc. These customised real-time offers
translate to much higher conversion of discount and loyalty offers than
the generalised offers that are typically made," says Reddy, 26, who
studied together with Mehra, 26, in IIT-Kharagpur .
Customers: Madura Garments, Raymond, Indus League, Levi's , Pizza Hut, Puma and more. Over 40 brands use the solution.
Revenue:
Not disclosed. Capillary reaches over 10 million consumers in over
5,000 stores in 400 cities. Winner of Qualcomm QPrize 2009 and finalist
at YourStory.in's TechSparks 2011. Qualcomm has invested in the company,
as have angel investors Harminder Sahni, Rajan Anandan and Venkat
Tadanki.
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