Small is BIG: Re-Inventing Business Models which will work for India
Loading ...A session immediately after the tea or coffee doesn’t need too much of awakening introductions. Moreover the title “Small is BIG” was interesting enough to fill the hall to its capacity.
Rajdeep Sehrawat (VP, NASSCOM), the moderator of the session started by sharing that the sessions so far have been about technology, future of the SaaS etc. But this session is about ‘how to make money using Cloud Computing & SaaS?’ He briefly introduced the two speakers – Alok Singh & Srikanth Rao. I am sure the audience (including myself) must have missed the presence of Vishal Gondal (CEO of IndiaGames), who was supposed to be in penal but couldn’t make it to the event for some reasons. Unlike most of the previous sessions, this session is on the discussion format vs individual presentations.
Srikanth Rao (CEO, Affordable Business Solutions) took over from Rajdeep. He started his talk by introducing his company. Affordable Business Solutions is a self funded, bootstrapped company and currently has 54 customers across 11 different industry verticals. “All of our customers are from SME segment” said Srikanth. While sharing about his journey, Srikanth mentioned that their key to keeping their customers satisfied and thus making money is their own qualification of the customer. Through their customer qualification process, they always ensured that the customer they are going to sign up will be satisfied with their services. Srikanth shared that their shift in focus from Software to Service has significantly contributed to their success and for their customers. “Being served”, which is integral to Indian culture created the need for shifting their focus to Service. “Speed of the delivery is another important factor for our success” said Srikanth.
After an informal survey of potential customers, they came up with an interesting formula that if their service at 10% of their customer’s employee cost can bring 20% improvement in employee’s productivity, their job is done – 100% ROI for the customer. “We are yet to reach that stage but we are on our way” Srikanth said humbly. He also mentioned that since beginning they were clear that unlike most of other SaaS players, they will not offer any free or freemium model. Rather, they’ll come up with a price which will fully justify the cost of their services.
Alok Singh (CEO, Novatium) started his talk by reinforcing the need of the SaaS in the current environment in which Network is creating pressure on Desktop. Today, the application of SaaS has expanded to variety of verticals including Search Engines, YouTubes, Mail Clients of the world. Alok shared Novatium’s journey which started 5 years back in Chennai. After working with a variety of pilot customers in India, the valuable insights we acquired about technological challenges of our product and the needs of our customers, hugely contributed to creating a successful product. He mentioned that “you need to keep the core of your idea” and at the same time “you need to be flexible enough to adopt to the needs to the market” Talking on the same point Alok shared that we scrapped five of our patents as soon as we realized that they were not appropriate to fulfill the needs of our customers. He concluded his session by saying that 3 years from now, SaaS or Cloud Computing will make a drastic change in the way computing is done today, especially for the end user.
Rajdeep started the Q & A by asking “how can you scale your company from 54 to 54,000 customers?” to Srikanth. Srikanth answered by saying that “given we are a services company, our people or the key team will play a critical role in scaling our operations” “Can we create 1000 people strong team with entrepreneurial spirit?” is the real question to answer for us? “Reverse franchising”, in which the person (or franchisee) commits his time and the company takes all other risks, is the model they have adapted to scale their company. “Time for implementation of the service” is another factor which will play an important role in our future growth. “Replicate vs Implement” is the model they using to accelerate the speed of the delivery of their services. When asked “what do you mean by replicate?” by a gentleman in the audience, Srikanth answered by referring to the example of “template”, which takes away the pain of starting from scratch. Given that the quality of Q & A is a measure of the success of any session, I must say that this session was very well attended. We are now entering into the next relevant session on Case Studies of companies who have adapted SaaS.
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Well said Sangeeta. As we are now moving towards the cloud based technology i believe its just the beginning. And another name i.e Ramco OnDemand ERP has come up with its SAAS model especially for the small and medium enterprises. Take a look:
http://www.ramcoondemand.com/campaign/
Congratulations Friends. Especially the ABS. Liked the concept. The SME market is the hottest this “recession” season. Biggies are also luring the MSME market. anyway, this award / this honour, is the way that small companies, and young entrepreneurs can get an inspiration
This initiative, inspires the young lot. We feel acknowledged. Today, these men were, tomorrow we could be there on the stage, getting this award.
Sangeet Kr Gupta, MLG Infotech Pvt Ltd – Finsys ERP Solutions, Okhla Phase 1, New Delhi – Faridabad-Kaleamb-Gurgaon – Noida – NSEZ – Bhiwadi.