Small Companies have to Stay Focussed...

l Tarang

acquired CyberCash India from VeriSign Inc in late 2001. Has that worked out for

you?



With the acquisition, we acquired a basic skill in the area of Internet

payment and payment gateways. We are doing a lot of work in the area of software

services for payment product companies. We have been doing the entire payment

product buildup for the leaders in this space like First Data Corporation in the

US, VeriSign. That acquisition has worked out well for us because of the domain

knowledge we gained and the clients we have got due to our expertise in these

areas.

l You

have been talking about doubling your workforce. That’s rare these days…



We’re currently about 110 people and the

engineering strength is about 80. We’ve been at the same level for the last

two years. Two years ago, we were about 70-80 and then we made the CyberCash

acquisition and then we kind of normalized the workforce. Since then, we have

been around the 120 mark. We are planning to hire about 100 more people shortly.

We’re seeing the US market pickup for us and we are doing a lot of the

application development and maintenance for US customers. Finance product

companies and payment product companies are looking at us for a depth of skill.

So our clients are not only looking at us for cost reduction. Our clients are

looking for people who can build products in the payment area or Java and

J2EE.

l Would

you throw light on some of your clients?



I can only name a partial list, for obvious reasons. We have about 10

offshore development clients in the US today like First Data Corporation,

VeriSign. In general, we are also working with HP as a partner.

l Why

are you looking at the US and Japan as markets when everybody is talking about

looking beyond the US?



The logic is simple–young companies have to stay focussed and have to

build deep skills and knowledge in a particular domain. If you do that customers

will come to you because you are the specialist in that area. And if you have a

strategy like that you can’t look at too many target markets. Our strategy is

to set up alliances with local players in other markets. We are not looking at

growing organically in those markets.

TV Mahalingam