/dq/media/agency_attachments/UPxQAOdkwhCk8EYzqyvs.png)
Follow UsKanbay India
Kanbay, the $107.2 million SI in financial and security services, has three
development facilities in Talwade and had also ventured beyond Pune last year to
open a fourth center in Hyderabad. Currently, these facilities house 2800
people, nearly 80% of Kanbay's global strength of 3600. "Each of these
Indian center follows a microcosm model, which means it has a total delivery
capability, from design, development to testing phases," says Kanbay India
CEO Cyprian D'Souza. Started in Pune in 1995, Kanbay has this year launched
its BPO operations in Dhole Patil Road and hopes to close deals with two clients
by next month. Coinciding with its IPO in US, the company reached $44.8 mn
global revenues in Q2 this year registering a 21% q-o-q growth. D'Souza also
hopes the company would reduce its dependence on its largest client Household
International, an HSBC subsidiary, to less than 50% this year.
eGain Communications
Call centers without the ubiquitous agents might not be great news for the
Indian BPO industry; but for many large companies like Barclays and Vodafone
automating their customer service functions online is today a viable business
alternative. Helping them in this metamorphosis of a call center into a
Web-based contact center is eGain Communications, with eGain Service 6, its eCRM
product solution. Headquartered in Mountain View, Califonia, the $22 mn company
now plans to make its Pune development center the global hub for its worldwide
operations with an investment of $10 million over the next three years.
"Even today, though 80% of the work in the Pune center is for the US
&UK markets, we are also doing Asia-Pacific sales & marketing from
here," says Vivek Rastogi, COO-APAC & India. Result: $4 mn in revenue
from Asia-Pacific only with 40 installations in places like ANZ, HSBC, Western
Power, Global Sources, Transworks, iGlobal and Asia TravelMart. To bolster its
presence among Indian call centers, eGain has now partnered with SIs like Wipro,
Datacraft and Netsol.
Wyse Systems
A typical small Pune outfit with turnover of Rs 75 lakhs, running from the
home of its MD, Y D Wadaskar, Wyse Systems specializes in security related
products. It started operations in 1993 with its hardware lock Sentry that is
today used by a number of small Indian software product companies like Research
Engineers in Kolkata for their engineering design tool, Hyderanad's Wings
Business System for FA packages as well as Blue Chip FA. Subsequently, Wyse had
also upgraded Sentry into an online product e-Sentry that uses Internet
authentication. Though this product has been installed in Bajaj Auto for online
dealer authentication and in Glaxo Healthcare for traveling MRs, Wadaskar admits
it has not picked up as expected. Recently, the company has launched a
fingerprint device called Bio Sentry USB, the first USB-based biometric product
in the country. This has been adopted by the Maharashtra government at Pune NIC,
the Jharkhand and UP government land record departments, the Dehu Ordnance
Factory and Gurgaon call centers like Southall Travels and Tele-performance.
Cubix Micro Systems
Though the channel community is quite vibrant in Pune, Cubix Micro Systems
distinguishes itself from the rest by virtue of the high-end networking
equipments it deals with and its status as a sole distributor of ATEN in India.
These equipments include KVM Switches over IP, Serial over IP, Power Management
over IP, Server Management Switches, VGA Splitter, VGA Extender and Cat 5
Splitter. With a client base of over 800 across India including top names like
Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Cognizant, Airtel, Hutch, L&T and Siemens, Cubix
generated revenues of Rs 12 crore in 2003-04. MD Nitn Naik predicts this would
go upto Rs 16.8 crore this year, thanks to the company also exporting to Europe
and Latin America.
Nihilent Technologies
"Though software product development is our core competence, it is a
high cash consuming business. And if the product is targeted at the domestic
market, there would be a tremendous dent on both your topline and bottomline,"
laments L C Singh, president & CEO of Nihilent Technologies, the youngest
CMM Level 4 company in India.
No wonder, products have a negligible contribution to its Rs 37 crore
revenue, most of it coming from offshore services and business consulting. A sad
reflection of reality, when you consider that Third Dream, Nihilent's
strategic planning tool aimed at Indian SMEs, recently bagged the runner up
position at the CSI Infosys award for Best Shrink-Wrapped software for the year
2003-2004 and has about 150 running clients in the country. The topline,
however, depends on consulting to four large South African clients including the
government revenue department-probably the influence of Nedcor Bank and
Dimension Data, two major South African companies who have the majority holding.
Mithi Software Technologies
In any other country, Mithi should have been a path-breaking name in the
software industry by now; instead CEO Tarun Malaviya, who runs the 25 man
operations from 2 Baner Road flats, has been thinking of giving it all up many,
many times having already scrapped all existing products except Connect Server.
Reason: Selling software products in the domestic market is frustrating
especially to the government buyers, and also VCs here do not have the appetite
for the risks involved or the patience to fund the software product business.
Malaviya's frustration is understandable: set up in 1995 with a Kafka-esque
name Men At Work, they developed India's first multi-lingual word processor
LEAP in collaboration with C-DAC. It had 500,000 users with clients including
Indian Railways and Parliament. Subsequent to a VC funding of Rs 2 crore in
2000, the company developed a multi-lingual e-mail exchange Mailjol which had
ITC e-choupal, IDRBT, Tecumseh, Bharat Forge and International Red Cross as
customers. This has today evolved into Mithi Connect Server, an Internet mail
server having 70 installations in sites at Food and Drug Athourity, Satyam, UNI,
TCS and ECIL amongst others.
Kalzoom Technologies
Kalzoom best defines Pune's innovative entrepreneurship-founded by three
IIT-Kanpur alumni, this one-and-half year old company boasts of a product in the
Knowledge Management space. Having created a basic framework called 'Hive'
that incorporates collaboration tools, knowledge capture, archival and recovery
tools. "We can customize separate vertical solutions / modules for
different industries," says CEO Uma Ganesh, one of the pioneering women of
Indian IT industry. With a primarily domestic focus, Kalzoom today boasts of a
clientele that includes Tata Chemicals, Crompton Greaves, New Age Electricals.
Hive comes in two flavors-other than the corporate version, there is an
academic module that creates knowledge repositories to help businesses rapidly
set up a centralized training environment. A number of Indian BPOs like WNS,
Zensar Suntech and MsourcE are already using Hive-Academic. With a target to tap
the US and Singapore market, Kalzoom expects to touch $2 million in revenues in
a year's time.
BMC Software
Headquartered in Houston, BMC's Pune center may be only one of its 11 ODCs,
but it is involved in nearly two-thirds of the R&D work for this $1.4 bn
software giant. Though it already houses 575 employees, president & CEO
Nitin Deshpande informs that the company plans to have 800 by the end of the
year. While 80% of the work on Magic Identity Management tool acquired from
Network Associates and all of component engineering on SmartDBA are done from
Pune, the center is also involved in R&D on PATROL Enterprise Manager,
Remedy Classic and Marimba software configuration management. "In addition,
we are handling the market research business intelligence and also involved in
extranet development and Webstore maintenance for our parent company," says
Deshpande. UBS, TransWorld Airlines, Wells-Fargo, DHL and EDS are some of the
largest clients the company services.
KPIT Cummins Infosystems
KPIT Cummins has been one of India's fastest growing IT companies and one of
Pune's pride in software services along with Zensar. While it finished 2003-04
with Rs 127 crore, chairman & Group CEO Ravi Pandit predicts the company
would touch Rs 235 crore in 2004-05 and Rs 500 crore in 2005-06. Though
currently, KPIT has 1215 people in its four facilities located at Kothrud and
Erandwane, it plans to consolidate and come up with a new facility at Hinjawadi
IT Park with 1500 people by December 2004. The company has also set up a VLSI
design center in Bangalore which would have 40 engineers by end of 2004. With
strong focus in the BFSI and manufacturing verticals, KPIT has seven star
customers including Cummins, Capital One, BNP Paribas, HP and Hitachi
contributing nearly 85% of its topline. During last year, it acquired
Houston-based PANEX Consulting for $7 million whose SAP competency was a
strategic complement to KPIT's traditional Oracle expertise-Pandit expects
$13 million in revenues from this acquisition this year.
CashTech Solutions
While i-flex and Infosys are raved about for their core banking products,
the Pune-based Rs 17 crore CashTech Solutions has carved out a niche for itself
in the space of cash management products with solutions like TransactCentral,
CashIn and CashWeb. According to managing director R N Iyer, other than the
domestic market, the company is spreading its footprints to other geographies
like Japan, Africa , the Middle-East and then to the US and Europe. CashTech
recently struck an alliance with the Korea-based Kookmin Data Systems (KDS) to
market its cash management solutions in the Korean market. Funded by private
equity investors Warburg Pincus, its clients include ABN Amro, BNP Paribas,
Deutsche Bank, HSBC, SBI, ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Shinsei Bank.
To cater to the remittance requirements, CashTech is now also offering the
Straight Through International Remittance (STIR) solution for cross-border
remittances. "With inward remittance levels to India at around $15 billion,
the Indian diaspora represents huge business opportunity for the banking
industry and our Indian clients include ICICI Bank and UTI," says Iyer.
DB Power Electronics
For DB Power, growth has been the main mantra in recent times as it ended
2003-04 with RS 48 crore and expects a 40% growth this year. To support this
growth, it set up a 40,000 sq. ft. new manufacturing and R&D facility at
Hadapsar at an investment of Rs 4.4 crore. Some of its large projects include
contracts of more than Rs 8 crore for three Nuclear Power Corporation plants at
Tarapur, Kota and Kaiga and a Rs 3-crore project at Shell's LNG plant at
Hazira. Its other major clients include Zensar, Kanbay, Reliance Botech, HSBC,
Persistent, Cognizant and L&T. Though its export revenues stood at Rs 7
crore last year, the company expects more gains this year in Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh as well as in Gulf refineries and pipelines.
CAT Computers
This is one software company that has not only withstood the challenge of
large MNCs like Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro but also did business of Rs 2.5
crore in 2003-04 by selling its Quick Heal brand of anti-virus and firewall
products. president & CEO Kailash Katkar expects the turnover to more than
double in 2004-05 and exceed Rs 5 crore. Reason: "For the forth time
running, we bagged UK-based Virus Bulletin magazine's acclaimed VB 100% award
for successfully detecting all the viruses "In-The-Wild" during
comparative testing of anti-virus products scoring over Norton and the
likes," says Katkar. Plus, CAT Computers is the first and only Indian
anti-virus software company till date to get the prestigious Checkmark
Certification for its Quick Heal range of products. Currently, the company
operates through 400 dealers across India, while internationally it partners
several companies like Aladin Knowledge Systems, Israel, Nevis Networks, US,
Nortrones Pty., Australia and Business Logic, Canada.
Kenati Technologies
Founded by five US-returned techies, Kenati Technologies belongs to that
breed of home-grown hi-tech companies which deserves adequate encouragement in
the form corporate and strategic investments. With its embedded Linux, network
software solutions and products for the network device market, it could show the
world that India too has the potential to have its own Motorola and Texas
Instruments. Its solution portfolio includes its flagship Linux product Network
Persona Linux, NP BloX, a framework to create management applications for
embedded devices and an n-tier NMS product. VP Operations, Abhijit Marathe and
VP, Product Development Sanmitra Pandharpur, two of Kenati's founders, inform
that another product, Network Persona Verticals for different embedded protocols
would come up by the end of the year. Kenati, which did business of $1.5 mn this
year, is also partnering with AMD and Motorola to offer its solutions on AMD's
Alchemy line of processors and the entire range of Motorola's host processor
series.
Modular Infotech
Founded by two ex-TIFR guys R R Joshi and Dr M N Cooper, Modular is another
sad tale of an Indian multi-lingual software company finding hard to meet ends
today. "This is primarily because the government has no compatibility
standard for vernacular software, and more importantly rampant piracy robs small
companies of revenues," they say.
Example: Modular's Gujarat revenues for Shree Lipi, its flagship product,
was zero, but following some contracts to Gujarat distributors who took care of
piracy, the state now contributes 20% to its coffers. Incidentally, Shree Lipi
has the largest library of Indian language fonts, comprising 27,000 Type 1 as
well as True Type fonts. Modular's other claims to fame: Ankur, a full-fledged
Office suite in 12 Indian languages; Samhita, a toolkit for application
development in Indian languages on Windows; Smart Bazaar, a multi-lingual PoS
application and AnkurMail, a multi-lingual mail server. With a turnover close to
Rs 4 crore, Modular is now venturing into services: it did a school
computerization project Vidyarthi and now converts legacy books to e-books.
Selectica India
San Jose-based $40 mn Selectica's ODC at Pune is involved in R&D on
interactive selling system software, pricing management, and product
configuration. While the company has a second ODC in Chennai, the Pune ODC has
now become a Center of Excellence. During Q1 of FY2005, Selectica completed
development of two applications taking its product list to 12: Selectica
Solutions Advisor, a packaged guided-selling solution; and Selectica Deal
Optimization, which helps executives and sales teams evaluate deal
attractiveness, enforce pricing strategies, and optimize profit margins. Says
Jitendra Jain, vice president, operations, "Solutions Advisor and Deal
Optimization are two components of Selectica's Enterprise Productivity Suite
(EPS), which is designed to automate the critical business processes
insufficiently addressed by CRM and ERP investments in the Opportunity-to-Order
space." Globally, Selectica services companies like IBM, GE, Dell, Cisco,
ABB and Rothwell while in India it has bagged Reliance Infocomm and BSNL Pune as
customers. Last year, the company also sold its eInsurance technology suite to
Accenture.
Quexst Associates
With software services companies contributing to India's IT boom,
strangely there are very few third-party software testing players. One of them
is Pune's Quexst Associates, founded by Vandana Dandekar and Meena Sane in
1998. Today this Rs 25 lakh company operates in three areas- software testing
services (contributes 50% of total revenues), software process consulting (30%)
and quality training services (20%). Its software testing clients include MBT,
KPIT Cummins, Siemens, NCR, Zensar and i-flex amongst others-not only does it
detect software defects, it also helps both products and services companies in
running helpdesks. Quexst also helps companies going for process quality
certifications as well as GAAP and SQA analyses-it helped Compulink in its CMM
Level 4 and Persistent in its Level 3 as well as Bajaj Allianz during ISO. In
corporate training on testing and quality processes, it has worked with Polaris,
IBM, Satyam, Kanbay and Zensar as customers.
Neilsoft
Pune's traditional expertise in engineering finds resonance in the Rs 13
crore Neilsoft that operates in the domains of engineering services and related
software. According to president & COO Surendra Agarwal, the company
provides offshore engineering services for global clients in the construction
and mechanical engineering segments especially in the automotive sector
servicing companies like Daimler Benz, High Concrete Structures, Hanson
Spancrete Pacific, Dukane and J&R Slaw. It has also developed software
products like DiEdifice for pressure die-casting, ePDLM for detecting defects in
product lifecycle management and Outfit Steel Module, a design tool on Tribon
platform and counts Bajaj Auto, Sundaram Clayton, Kinetic Engineering,
Aurangabad Electricals and Oswal Electricals as domestic customers. For ePDLM,
it has recently signed an LoI with Kirloskar Brothers. Besides, Neilsoft is also
into digital content development services, software localization services,
software testing which it is doing for Veritas and is even an Autodesk
distributor in India. One of the first companies in engineering BPO, Agarwal
informs that Neilsoft plans to acquire an Indian company in the embedded
software space and cross Rs 23 crore in revenues in 2004-05 and subsequently go
for an IPO in 2006-07.
Seacom Solutions
Founded by the husband and wife team of Ajay and Saaz Agarwal, Seacom's
focus is on both products and services for the retail vertical that contributed
Rs 2.9 crore in 2003-04. Its SmartShop POS product is used by five of India's
Top 10 retailers including Pantaloons, RPG Retail (through Zensar), Trent, ITC
and Videocon, whereas its services are availed by SMEs like Modern Silk House,
Vama Jewellery chain, Pioneer Sports, More Mischief and Das. Recently, it tied
up with Forbes Bradma Business Automation, a division of Forbes Gokak to
distribute SmartShop. It is also doing offshore work on converting Clipper
databases to .NET for one UK client. Other than retail, Seacom is also into
AS/400 based applications and related e-solutions, a business that generated Rs
1.5 crore this year. With AS/400 focus in Japan, Agarwal expects the revenue to
reach Rs 4 crore this year, while retail revenue could reach Rs 5 crore. But he
laments that small companies like Seacom suffer without enough marketing muscle
owing to lack of funds. "Even Nasscom is not doing anything for us, and so
we have refused to join them," he alleges.
Synise Technologies
Synise, a Bharat Forge company, runs Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)
consulting, services and solutions on the Indiaengineering platform. Boasting of
over 75 corporate customers including the likes of Cummins, Thermax, Tata
Chemicals, Electrolux, Whirlpool and Tata Steel across its offerings, the
company has enabled over Rs 800 crore of procurement and disposals contracts on
Indiaengineering and has a total user base of over 8,000 unique users. It has
also implemented its software solution at over eight locations in diverse areas
such as Project RFQ, eBidding, Request for Information solution and Supply
Management solution. These include companies like Tata Chemicals, Sunflex, ABB,
Sterlite, Mahindra 7 Mahindra, Automotive Axel, Deepak Nitrite and Sudarshan
Chemicals. While the company did $0.5 million of business in 2003-04, CEO Manish
Gupta expects it to cross $1.5 million in 2004-05.
Cybage Software
Cybage's history symbolizes the evolution of the Indian IT industry. Founded
in 1995 by the Nathani brothers, the company developed and introduced two
products, CyberAge Raider and CyberAge Surfer, in the market. But later it
shifted into software services where it managed to scale up to reach Rs 45 crore
in topline in 2003-04. It has grown to 800 people in two centers in Pune and
expects to reach 1200 within six months. With the company involved in
development and testing for the MSDN Group, Cybage has also set up a small
subsidiary with 20 people near Microsoft office in Redmond at an investment of
$1 million. CEO Arun Nathani informs that currently Cybage is involved in
Internet advertising, tier II CRM/ERP implementation, grid computing, network
management tools, embedded devices, URL filtering and VoIP applications. Other
than Microsoft, the major customers serviced include Doubleclick, Altiris,
Athena Health and Security Software Systems. Informs President Deepak Nathani,
"We expect touch Rs 70 crore in 2004-05 and hope to get listed in two years
time."
...And the Others Companies
Name
of Operation
Person
No
Ganesh Khind, Pune-411007
Infoworld
distributor/IT training
MIDC, Bhosari, Pune-411026
Technologies
Shivaji Nagar, Pune-411020
Cables
& Optic fiber & Structured Cabling
Pimpri, Pune-411018
India
Mula road, Khadki, Pune-411003
Pune-411027
Software
Bunglow chowk, Model colony, Pune-411016
complex, 7 National Games Road, Yerawada, Pune-411006
Software
Pune-411001
Software
Bapat Road, near Chatusringi Temple, Pune-411016
Engineering Projects
Nagar, Paud Road, Pune-411038
Tech
Niketan Society, Mayue, Kothrud, Pune-411029
Technologies
Koregaon Park, Pune-411001
Security Solutions
Vidyut Nagar, off South Main Road, Koregaon Park, Pune-411001
India
Main Road,Koregaon Park, Pune-411001
Networks
Road, Bhau Patil Marg, Pune-411020
DSL
U Bhandari Showroom, off Abhimanashri society., Pashan, Pune-411008
Software
Mumbai-Pune Highway,
Shivajinagar, Pune-411005
Systems
near Rahul theatre Ganeshkhind road, Shivajinagar, Pune-411005
Kumar Senate”, plot # 970, SB road, Shivajinagar, Pune-411016
Software
Viman Nagar, Pune-411014
Software
Shivajinagar, Pune-411005
Infotech
Income Tax Lane, off Karve road, Pune-411004
Techologies
training
Navasahyadra, Pune-411052
Access Technologies
depot, Paud road, Kothrud, Pune-411038
Technologies
rd, Deccan Gymkhana, Pune-411004
Systems
Pune-410014
Infosystems
Abhinav Parisar, Erandwane, Pune
Pune-411005
Info Consumables
Mangalwar Peth, Barne road, near Sinchan Bhavan, Pune-411011
Publishing Solutions
Realtage, Viman Nagar, Pune-411014
Solutions
Sadashiv Peth, Pune-411030
Computers & Softwares
Bibwewadi, Pune-411037
India
Park, MIDC, Hinjewadi, Pune-411057
Software
road, Wakdewadi, Pune-411003
Infotech
Patil road, Pune-411001
Systems
road, Aundh, Pune-411007
Technologies
Rd, Pune-411001
India
BJ road, Pune-411001
Systems
near Kohinoor Tech Institute, Deccan Gymkhana, Pune-411004
India
Behind Weikfield,Nagar Rd, Pune-411014
Networks
Leela Chambers, 1237 Apte road, Deccan Gymkhana, Pune-411004