India’s Product Initiative gains pace
Loading ...We have had Subex in telecom fraud management solutions, Infozech in telecom billing, Ramco and Eastern Software (ebizframe) in ERP, Tally in accounting solutions, Nucleas Software and Polaris in financial solutions , and NewGen in business process management solutions.
Now, a host of relatively new companies are broadening this base of Indias nascent software product business . Some of them have acquired a significant presence globally, some are focused on creating products for the domestic market, and most are beginning to adapt their products to the softwareas-a-service (SaaS) model, where users pay only when they use the product.
Bangalore-based PK4 Software Technologies has created a customer relationship management (CRM) product thats delivered through a SaaS model . Kishore Mandyam, who founded the company in 2006, says his CRM product can handle everything from presales to customer complaints and is customized for India. American solutions have dominated the market, but the problem with them is that they dont provide for peculiarities like the widespread use of SMS here compared to the US. In the US, the sales person is a rock star, highly paid and would have a laptop. In India, sales folk are often at the lowest end, preferring cheap communication modes like SMS, he says.
With Mandyams web-based ImpelCRM product, the sales person has to simply send a SMS to obtain any customer information he requires. Since the product went live in May 2008, the companys got 28 customers. Mandyam says those like Lifecell and Bausch & Lomb have used it very effectively . And since it works on a SaaS model, customers need to pay only based on their use.
OrangeScape Technologies of Chennai has created tools (middleware in tech jargon) that can be used to accelerate the creation of SaaS applications . The tools are available free to those who want to create the applications , but once the application starts generating paying customers, it will have to start making payments to OrangeScape based on the number of customers.
Suresh Sambandam, who founded the company six years ago, says such tools are particularly important in SaaS because newer versions of SaaS applications are expected to come out within weeks as customer requirements change. They are in perpetual beta, he says. The product today has over 40 customers, including those like Citibank, Unilever and Astra Zeneca.
TenMiless help desk management product today has about 6,000 customers , most of them overseas. The tool is designed for small and medium businesses and helps them to ensure that all requests are quickly followed up. It helps to do things like manage customer emails, schedule interviews. Shalin Jain, founder of the Chennai-based company, says the company has just developed a SaaS model of the product.
Another big success story has been Kolkata-based InfoSoft Globals FusionCharts . The company has 14,000 customers globally, including about 400 of the Fortune 500, the likes of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, HP, IBM and Dell. The company provides interactive and animated charts, graphs, maps and gauges that can put in a visual form any data that you have. Pallav Nadhani, who founded the company in 2002, says the company now has 75 different kinds of charts, and their interactive nature is what has contributed much to the success.
Nasscoms regional director Avinash Raghava says others like Synages Desk-Away project collaboration software, RouteGurus SMS and web-based product to get directions, Sourcebits, that has developed applications for the iPhone and Mac, have also made a big impact. Indias product initiative is now seen to be gaining momentum with a high level of mentoring happening, and with system integrators beginning to partner with product companies.
Source: The Times of India (Bangalore edition)
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