Made In India

Sahara Samay Rashtriya, the leading national television channel in India,
used a laptopbased newsgathering solution to send exclusive video footage of the
US Presidential elections on December 14, 2004. The equipment used was vid'linkMOBILE.

Meet Tushar Kothari, co-founder and managing director of the Noida-based
Beehive Systems that has developed the vid'linkMOBILE. Beehive was born out of
the imagination and entrepreneurial spirits of Kothari and Ganesh Rajamani, both
graduates from the Benaras Hindu University's IT engineering batch of 1988.
Says Kothari, "Our suite of solutions cover the entire broadcast wheel of
Acquire-Manage-Enrich-On-air." Beehive currently has 65 employees on its
roaster and hopes to become a $3 mn organization by the end of 2005. Kothari and
team plan to leverage its existing strengths to operate in the areas of digital
signage, interactive TV, video-on-demand, video archival services and HD TV
transformation.

“An engineering background helped us to grasp the underlying technology and exploit it to enter the media space”  -Tushar Kothari, co-founder and MD, Beehive Systems

Delhi-based Whizlabs Software, a 42-member ISO 9001:2000-certified company,
is dedicated to providing IT Skill Assessment and Certification Exam Preparation
solutions to IT professionals and corporations across the globe. Whizlabs was
conceived when three friends from IIT-Delhi's 1999 batch got together to do
something different. Unlike Beehive that was established with some initial seed
capital from Citicorp, Pradeep Chopra, Purvesh Sharma and Kapil Nakra started
Whizlabs with help from family and friends, in October 2000. Whizlabs' almost
entire customer base is international. So how did this Delhi-based company
manage such a glamorous client base? Says Chopra, "We resorted to online
marketing through which clients like Cisco and Accenture reached us."
Whizlabs is currently clocking a phenomenal growth rate of 200%. Kothari expects
a turnover of $2.5 mn by the end of 2006.

A clutch of SMEs dotting the Indian IT landscape and led by a young brigade
of geeks are also crafting new tales of success with out-of-the-box products and
strategies. Welcome to a next wave in the Indian IT space-innovation.

Benglore-based Liqwid Krystal specializes in ICT Learning and Human Capital
Management. It was started in 1999 with 50 people and a seed capital of $2 mn
from a fund created by Sivan Securities, Bank of America and Nomura. Liqwid
Krystal was founded on strong fundamentals by Anand Adkoli, an MS from Illinois,
US and an IT-veteran of 16 years, and Ramana Gagola, who has an industry
experience spanning 30 years. Says Anand Adkoli, "We had seen IT
professionals struggling to cope with changes in technology. We realized that
sequential learning does not work in online education. Our CodeSaw architecture
covers the entire human capital cycle-learning, assessment and
certification." Adkoli expects the company to touch a turnover of $4-5 mn.

Pradeep Chopra, co-founder and Director, WhizlabsÂ

Pune-based Pace Soft Silicon develops high value-added multimedia products,
applications and architecture for packet-based wireless applications or mobile
devices and has an elite client list. Then there is Jataayu Software-the first
company in the world to launch WAP 2.0 compliant WAP gateway and the forth to
have launched the WAP 1x gateway in 2000. The list goes on...

Is there enough fizz in this bubble?

Entrepreneurship and great innovation. These are definite signs of an
industry maturing. But we have seen the hype created around the dotcom bubble
and we have seen the bubble burst! quite miserably. Is Round II destined to go
the same way? Not quite, according to a very optimistic industry feedback. Says
Anil Bakht, chairman and managing director, Eastern Software Systems, "The
dotcom bubble consisted of a lot of companies with just an idea to deliver a
service or goods on the net. Each of these innovative product development SMEs
have a proper revenue model in place." Adds Ganesh Natarajan, vice chairman
and managing director, Zensar Technologies, "Unlike the dotcom tsunami that
wiped out the bubble, this new wave will carry Indian IT to a new sustainable
level." These SMEs have ventured into unique and uncharted territories to
create a niche for themselves. Take Compulink Systems, which develops products
in the area of Services Execution Management. According to Vishwas Mahajan,
co-founder and CEO of Compulink, "We were looking for a high growth area
that was clearly under-serviced but had great potential in the next 10 years;
where the market was either fragmented or did not have a market leader and where
being in India could actually work to our advantage."

Vishwas Mahajan, co-founder and CEO, Compulink

SDG Software Technologies offers products for stock exchanges, brokerage
houses, and investment funds and specializes in the area of Surveillance, Fraud
Management and Trading Systems. Now, let's look at statistics. Frost &
Sullivan estimates that the R&D outsourcing market in India for IT will grow
at CAGR 32.05% to $9.1 bn by 2010. R&D outsourcing market for telecom in
India is likely to grow from $.07 bn in 2003 to $4.1 bn in 2010 at CAGR 28.73%.
That's a rosy picture indeed, but not without hurdles.

Nasscom has proposed the setting up of an Innovation Fund and a Patent Fund
for the benefit of IT startups in the R&D space. Reasons: absence of
adequate angel funding and poor grants from the Ministry of IT. Says Sunil Mehta
of Nasscom, "Every grant should be at least equivalent to the fees for
filing an application for a patent." That is at least $10,000. However,
with support from the Government and legal help, Mehta feels that the filing
fees could come down significantly in the near future. Cheers to that!

Bhaswati in New
Delhi

The Industry Initiative

To boost the pioneering spirit and create a culture of innovation, Nasscom
will spotlight the most vibrant and promising organizations from the ICT sector
at its annual summit this year.

These companies have all been different, creative, dynamic and have
taken the unbeaten path. They have built products that are possibly firsts; have
launched services that break the traditional mould; have taken the non-typical
route to new markets and have resorted to imaginative strategies to sustain
growth and stay ahead of their peers. These are companies that Nasscom will be
showcasing at Nasscom 2005. The Nasscom Innovation forum started the
process with applications from nearly 100 emerging companies. Six companies
were identified from each zone. Finally, six companies from the 18 came through
the selection process in which CEOs from some of India's reputed software
houses, the likes of Jerry Rao, Deepak Ghaisas, Harish Mehta, Rajeev Modi,
Pawan Kumar, participated. These six companies will get the opportunity to take
their respective stories to the global market on February 10 at Nasscom 2005.
Here's a sneak peep at the top six emerging IT companies that are
truly innovative.

Beehive Systems

Area of Specialization: Broadcast Technology

Founders: Tushar Kothari & Ganesh Rajamani

Year of Inception: 1989

Turnover (2003-04): Rs 9 crore

Estimated Turnover (2004-05): Rs 13.5 crore

Customers: Zee News, CNBC-TV 18, Sahara Samay, Aajtak, Amrita TV, Star
News, Indiavision and broadcasting companies in The ASAN, Middle East and Europe

Innovative Products/Service: Innovative solutions in the areas of digital
new gathering (vid'link, vid'linkMOBILE), automated data graphics (digi'newz),
digital newsroom solutions (fin'wiz, isle'wiz, Wasp3D), and custom software
solutions (Mobile2TV, elections and sports and other graphics for delivering
real-time information) for broadcasters.

Website: www.beesys.com

Compulink Systems

Area of Specialization: Services Execution Management

Founders: Vishwas Mahajan & Uday Kothari

Year of Inception: 1996

Turnover (2003-04): Rs 8 crore

Estimated Turnover (2004-05): Rs 20 crore

Customers: ABB, Accenture, Atos Origin, Barry-Wehmiller, Canon, Cheung
Kong Group of Hong Kong, Datamatics, Geometric software, Onward, Sierra
Atlantic, Honeywell Automation

Innovative Products/Service: Customized services to create web-based
Business Applications, powered by our WHIZ Framework. ProjectByNet, an
enterprise-wide Services Execution Management tool for IT Enterprises that
strives to execute distributed and remote projects in compliance with quality
processes. ProjectByNet facilitates collaboration between client and project
teams while fostering a structured project management discipline. It provides
accurate, real-time information on the status of programs & projects,
ensuring successful completion and customer satisfaction.

Website: www.compulink.co.in

Liqwid Krystal India

Area of Specialization: ICT e-Learning and Human Capital Management
technologies

Founders: Anand Adkoli & Ramana Gagola

Year of Inception: 1999

Turnover (2003-04): Rs 9 crore

Estimated Turnover (2004-05): Rs 24 crore

Customers: Addison Wesley, O'Reilly, Thomson Learning, Sun
Microsystems, Skyris Networks

Innovative Products/Service: Codesaw, a learning platform that allows
users to write and compile programs on the Liqwid Krystal interface across
networks without a programming environment, thereby reducing investment costs
towards providing programming environment for human capital management, time and
scale

Website: www.liqwidkrystal.com

Srishti Software

Area of Specialization: Knowledge Management

Founders: Ajay Shankar Sharma

Year of Inception: 1997

Turnover (2003-04): Rs 3.16 crore

Estimated Turnover (2004-05): Rs 9 crore

Customers: Deutsche Bank, Sony, Watson Wyatt, Times Group, CDAC, Webster
Bank, CBS Market Watch, Red hat Technologies

Innovative Products/Service: WISDOM, a Generation IV Enterprise Knowledge
Management Suite. WISDOM provides real-time scalability and reduces costs,
reduces times spent on duplication and reduces data collection time to 20%

Website: www.srishtisoft.com

Pace Soft Silicon

Area of Specialization: Video-based applications, codecs and architectures
on phones, PDAs, personal media players

Founders: Neil Salvi

Year of Inception: 2000

Turnover (2003-04): Rs 7 crore

Estimated Turnover (2004-05): Rs 12 crore

Customers: Intel, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard,
Motorola, Tata Elxsi, ADS, Pantech

Innovative Products/Service: High value-added multimedia products,
applications and architectures for packet-based applications or mobile devices.
Its patented applications and embedded algorithms are fully standards compliant
and designed for maximum performance at minimum utility

Website: www.pace-softsilicon.com

Whizlabs Software

Area of Specialization: e-Learning with a focus on IT Certification Exam
Preparation for individuals and IT Skill Assessment and Enhancement for
corporates

Founders: Purvesh Sharma, Kapil Nakra & Pradeep Chopra

Year of Inception: 2000

Turnover (2003-04): Rs 1.2 crore

Estimated Turnover (2004-05): Rs 2.7 crore

Customers: Accenture, Bunge, JP Morgan, Induslogic, Nucleus software, Coface,
IBM, Infosys

Innovative Products/Service: WISDOM, a Generation IV Enterprise Knowledge
Management Suite. WISDOM provides real-time scalability and reduces costs,
reduces time spent on duplication and reduces data collection time to 20%

Website: www.whizlabs.com