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SEED INFOTECH-Racing Ahead

Enough time has elapsed since the seeding of SEED Infotech way

back in 1994 by two IIT post-graduates then working with DRDO with the express

vision of bridging the gap between IT industry requirements and the university

curriculum. Today SEED has germinated into one of the premier niche IT training

institutes that has spread its branches beyond Pune into other locations like

Mumbai, Nashik, Aurangabad, Ahmednagar and now Bangalore. Not only does it have

14 centers across these locations, it has also expanded beyond training into

areas like staffing, outsourced software testing and even software development.

One of the co-founders Narendra Barhate, now CEO &

director, SEED Infotech, boasts of an illustrious list of corporate clients like

Cognizant, Infosys, KPIT Cummins and MBT whom it has provided training on

technologies like .NET, Java, Oracle, SQL Server, Project Management and

software testing. The Mumbai center was formed under an MoU with All India

Institute of Local Self Government (AIILSG) to provide training and research on

urban development and local government. "We also pioneered operations in

Japanese language training and deployment, and have trained and placed over 200

professionals in Japan through i-POC in companies like NTT Docomo and

Fujitsu," adds Barhate. This was done through a tie-up with Vertex Software

leading to the genesis of Kanzen-SEED's Japanese division.

PRODUCTDOSSIER-Fast, Faster, Fastest

Tucked away in a small residential flat in one corner of Pune,

ProductDossier represents the archetypal Pune IT company-small and maybe

insignificant in size with a revenue of Rs 1 crore, but significant otherwise in

the products it has developed catering to some niche domain of PLM. Founded in

the year 2000, ProductDossier delivers PLM solutions and services-its

TouchBase suite of products helps organizations manage their complete product

development process from concept to design to manufacturing to customer

delivery.

The integrated, Web-based, collaborative product development solution has

been installed in organizations such as Pari Robotics in Pune, KSI Bochum in

Germany and Systems Solutions in USA.

HARBINGER GROUP-Comes a Long Way

Having started small in 1990, the Harbinger Group has today

carved out a niche for itself in the space of e-learning-its authoring tool,

the Elicitus suite of products today boasts of blue-chip clients, both in India

as well as internationally. Appropriately though it is headquartered in Pune, it

also has got a subsidiary office in Redmond and customers in 15 countries like

US, UK, Japan, Israel, Germany, South Africa, Ireland, Canada and South Korea

amongst others; no doubt Harbinger has traveled a long way from the time CMD

Vikas Joshi had to move around Pune on his two-wheeler to sell his product.

2005 has been a particularly busy year for Harbinger-not

only did it launch Elicitus Interactivity Builder, a rapid interactivity

authoring tool, it also upgraded other existing solutions like Offline Content

Player, Elicitus Content Publisher, Elicitus Slide Converter and Elicitus

Progress Tracker. The company also bagged a number of new clients this year-these

include Northwest Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Pepsico International, Tetratech EC

and Globe wireless on the international front while on the domestic market it

got Satyam, AXA, e2e Serwizsol, Idea Cellular, Tata Quality Management Systems,

Goodlass Nerolac, Zicom into its kitty. It already boasts of blue-chip customers

globally like Bristol Myers Squibb, United Nations and Citibank.

According to Joshi, Harbinger had earlier made an investment

of Rs 4.5 crore in its center of excellence in Pune, which was raised to Rs 6.5

crore this year. This was primarily owing to the growing domestic enterprise

e-learning market, particularly the IT/ITeS sector. "E-learning is growing

fast in the country and corporates are investing time and money as they realize

its value. Our clients are saving as much as 30% of time using e-learning

modules," asserts Joshi to explain this phenomenon. He also informs that

though currently, intellectual property driven business accounts for 25% of

Harbinger revenues, the company has targeted this to be above 50% in the medium

term.

Meanwhile, the company's standards for offline content management

interface, has been approved by the Aviation Industry Computer-based Training

Committee (AICC), the body which steers standardization in the e-learning space.

NETPRO-Moving Fast Pace

Having started in 2002, Netpro with Rs 4 crore revenue is one

of the fastest growing companies in Pune. One reason for the success could be

attributed to CMD TN Sundar, one of India's IT industry veterans with more

than 40 years experience as Head of Manufacturing Applications in the erstwhile

IBM India, co-founder of the Datapro group and South Asia Country Director of

PictureTel. The other factor would be the variety of solutions it has to offer-Tentacle,

a contact management solution developed on .NET, besides being the national

distributor for ProClarity BI tool, ActivePDF as well as Altiris IT Lifecycle

Management software and gold partner for Microsoft SQL Server.

However, Sundar reminds that services is also another

important component of Netpro contributing 60% to its total turnover. Migration

to .NET, expertise on Magic platform (eDeveloper), EAI, ProClarity and SQL

Server BI, Altiris as well as mobile application development have been some of

the areas where Netpro has succeeded both on the domestic market as well as an

offshore service provider.

Proclarity has been installed in Blue Star, Wipro BPO, Jet

Airways, Infosys (including Progeon) and SAB Miller (erstwhile Shaw Wallace)

while consulting services for ProClarity are offered abroad. Similarly, Altiris

has been installed in organizations including Atlas Copco, 3G Global Services,

Wipro, HP, Reckit Benckiser and TCS while service assignments have been carried

outside India through Gnet. Netpro has also provided ProClarity on SQL server

for clients like Daimler Chrysler, Bank of Maharashtra and Tata International.

GNet is a 50:50 JV Netpro has set up with GCI systems in

Minneapolis, US. GNet addresses the North American market for BI consulting,

software projects on .NET and Magic while Netpro exclusively manages the ODC in

Pune. The Pune center also functions as an ODC for Vadim Software from Canada,

for whom it undertakes where product development on Magic. Sundar maintains that

though GNet started this year has brought in two clients, by next year the

number will increase to 12.

However, he sounds justifiably proud of his .NET expertise and the Tentacle

product developed on the platform.

COMPULINK SYSTEMS-Promising Future

As Compulink lies on the verge of making it on the big stage,

other home-grown Pune outfits should take a cue from it and replicate the growth

strategy it has pursued since its inception in 1993. Though for the first few

years it functioned as another IT services company till realization dawned on

founder Vishwas Mahajan that he needs to identify a niche to make a mark for

Compulink. A project management tool for IT companies was identified as this

elusive niche and thereby ProjectByNet came into existence.

Today, ProjectByNet has been adopted by 15 customers

including some of the most illustrious names in the IT domain; also, the reach

of the product has expanded beyond IT also into the engineering space. As a

result, Compulink has become a Rs 13 crore company with over 175 people

necessitating a consolidated facility at Hinjewadi IT Park; this success story

is culminating in the Rs 26.48 crore IPO the company is currently going for. The

company has also been recognized by Nasscom as one of the most promising

emerging companies that could become a star of the future.

Though ProjectByNet has been Compulink's initial claim to

fame, Mahajan informs that today the company is positioned as an IP-led

organization that offers a portfolio of specialized products and services in the

Services Execution Management (SEM) space. "SEM is a way of automating

business processes that is tailored precisely to the requirements of the

services sector. These core processes typically include project management,

resource management, knowledge management, time and expense management,

invoicing and support. Our products, Whizible SEM and Whizible Project by Net (PBN),

are focused on the SEM space, and have achieved an installed base of over 29,000

users in 75 prestigious organizations across the globe."

In its traditional stronghold, the IT sector, Compulink has been deployed

across Accenture's 12 delivery centers, as well as other leading players like

Wipro, Persistent, Datamatics, Zensar, Geometric, Nucleus Software and Quinnox.

Even in the more recently introduced engineering sector, it today boasts of

clients like Honeywell, Mahindra, Emerson, ABB, and Tata Consulting Engineers.

UBICS INDIA-King of Good Times

Everyone knows that Vijay Mallya is the king of good times

but that he is also the CEO of a Pune-based IT company is perhaps not very well

known. Strictly speaking, the Indian arm of UBICS Inc headquartered in

Pittsburgh should not be included in this list of home-grown Pune companies, but

should instead come in the list of MNCs with back-office ODCs in Pune. However,

Dataquest made a special consideration keeping in mind the assertion made by

Sunil Patil, President, Global Solutions on the choice of Pune as UBICS' India

HQ. Logically, one would expect this to be Bangalore, India's software hub and

also UB Group's HQ. But the quality of Pune's manpower, the low attrition

rate and the proximity to the Mumbai market tilted the scale in Pune's favor

and made UBICS India another jewel in Pune's IT crown.

Primarily the Pune-based UBICS India offers three lines of

services: its product portfolio consists of Ventive, an e-recruitment solution

as well as SeeITFirst, a streaming video solution; a KPO project from a large

healthcare solutions company in US worth $1.5 mn for the current year; and,

lastly a high-end recruitment consulting services for primarily IT companies.

While the Pune HQ is involved in all three activities, offices in Bangalore and

Delhi have been earmarked for consulting services and e-governance projects

respectively.

Both Ventive and SeeITFirst are currently targeted at the

Indian market-KPIT Cummins and Texas Instruments have deployed Ventive while

State Bank of India has selected SeeITFirst for employee communication and

training across its 9200 centers in India. SeeITFirst has also been adopted by

Pune's Ayurveda Health Club Online to broadcast practicing Ayurveda techniques

to patients in US and Europe and by the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS)

of the Ministry of Health to capture child health information on video and

sending it to rural health centers.

The KPO deal with the US healthcare company involves managing

their medical database for group insurance purchasing for hospitals while

recruitment consulting has a taker in MBT with negotiations going on with IBM

Global Services.

Rajneesh De