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CellSpinEXPANDING
CELL PHONE TOTHE
NEXT LEVEL
BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA SEPTEMBER - 2009 SILICONINDIA.COM
PUBLISHED SINCE1997
sil iconindia
BobbyGurvinder Singh, CEO
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silicon i n d i a
[InMy Opinion]
4 Important Entrepreneurial
LessonsBy Bharat Desai,Syntel
[Infocus]H1-B Restriction:SiliconValleytobe HurtInd ians Pa id 20 Times LessThanUS Employees
CloudComputing
IT industrysLatestHypeTalentDeficit to HauntIndianFirms
Americans, Britonsvisited
Indiathemostin 2008
[VCChakra]
Simply Hired Raises
$4.6 millionin Series D round
of Funding
[CEOSpotlight]
[Company Spotlight]
EC Manage:Betting on Effi-ciencyand CompetencyBy Jayakishore Bayadi
[Technology]
ROIfrom WebExperienceManagement:Making theCaseBy Loren Weinberg& ElaineChen,
FatWire Software
[Business]
A Journeyin CEMCustomers
Perceive ValueBased on Expe-
riencesThey Receive
[SI20 Profile]
[Entrepreneur 101]
EntrepreneurialVisionBy Gunjan Sinha
[SiliconIndia Blogs]
06
10
13
13
22
24
28
43
44
46
Contents August 2009
14Cover Story
By Jayakishore Bayadi
BobbyGurvinder Singh, CEO
CellSpin
CEll phonE tothE nExt lEvEl
Expanding
IndianInfrastructureSecWayfor TomorrowsGrowByAnilSeth,ProjectsandMar
Limited(SPML)
Telecom theGreat Leve
Economic Strata
ByAnil Nair, AvayaGlobalCo
HavingLostits Competiti
TextileIndustryFacesDe
BySanjayKJain,TTLtd
FutureOutlookfor Ceme
ByVinodJuneja,BrajBinaniG
PharmaceuticalsHealthyByRangaIyer,Wyeth
IndianElectricalEquipme
Switchingto FasterGrowBySunilSikka,HavellsIndia
IndiaThe RoadAhead for
ByGovindShrikhande,Shoppe
IndianShippingIndustryS
RoughWeatherByShri S.Hajara,
TheShippingCorporationofIn
31
32
34
37
38
39
40
42
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Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Harvi Sachar
Managing Editor
Pradeep Shankar
Associate Editors
Jayakishore Bayadi ChristoJacobJaya SmithaMenon
Senior CorrespondentsAnithaGovind VimaliSwamy
Correspondent Eureka Bharali
Sr.Visualizer RaghuKoppalOnline Manager Suresh Kumar
Subscription Manager P Magendran
M
ai
li
ng Ad
d
re
s
s
SiliconIndia Inc44790 S. Grimmer Blvd
Suite 202,Fremont, CA 94538
T:510.440.8249, F:510.440.8276
Business Development Manager
Mona SharmaT:510.344.0450
siliconindiaSeptember2009 ,volum e 12-08 (ISSN 1091-9503)
Published monthly by siliconindia,Inc.
siliconindias circulation is audited and certifiedby BPA International. siliconindia is available throughmainstream retail outletssuch asBarnes& Noble,Borders,andTowerRecords.Itis alsoavailableatethnicAsian IndianstoresinmajorIndianhotspotsacrosstheU.S.Themagazineis alsodis-
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Copyright 2009 siliconindia, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproductionin whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without writ-ten permission from the publisher is prohibited.The publisher assumes
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Visit www.siliconindia.com or send email [email protected]
SEPTEMBER - 2009
Editorial
Indias maiden moon mission launched on October 22 last yearwas abruptly terminated, as the radio contact with the Chan-
drayaan-1 spacecraft was lost last month. A mission life of
two years lasted only for ten months. However ISRO scientistsclaimed that the mission was a great success and 95 percent of itsobjectives were completed.
Government has set up an assessment committee to look into
the performance of the mission in totality. But what is more impor-tant for the team of Chandrayaan is to learn from the failure and
bounce back with full vigor with the already announced Chan-drayaan II.
As Murphys Law states Things will go wrong in any given sit-uation, if you give them a chance. Or more commonly, whatever
can go wrong, will go wrong.
In the Indian context, it is a great challenge for the team from anemotional and social point of view since somehow failure is not re-
spected in our culture. The social stigma and pressure attached tofailure poses the biggest challenge. This is perhaps one of the
biggest stumbling blocks in building a Silicon Valley in India.As Randy Komisar, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
says, What distinguishes the Silicon Valley is not its successes, butthe way in which it deals with failures. The Valley is about experi-mentation, innovation, and taking new risks. Only a small business
that can deal with failure and still make money can exist in this en-vironment. It is a model based on many, many failures and a few
extraordinary successes.Whether in profession, project or business, failures are bound
to happen. By learning to bounce through repetitive process of suc-
cess and failure, you will develop a resilience that will lead to thetrue business confidence that will ultimately determine our success.
We at siliconindia always attempt to talk to entrepreneurs, busi-ness leaders, technology professionals across the ranks to under-
stand some of the mistakes they did and their learning. We could allshare and learn from each other and in turn will drive the economy.
As usual, please keep your contributions, feedback and comments
coming!
Harvi SacharEditor-in-Chief
Learning from Failure
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silicon i n d i a |6|S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
The story of Syntel is one of
transition and evolution. Imoved to the United States
in the late 1970s while
working for an Indian tech-nology services firm. Through my work
as a consultant, I realized that there wasa significant business opportunity deliv-
ering high-quality programming talent tocompanies in need of software expertise.
I decided to further my education by at-
tending The University of Michigan onnights and weekends, eventually earning
an M.B.A.In 1980, my wife Neerja and I were
both in graduate school and foundedSyntel (then called Systems Interna-
tional) using our savings of $2,000. Westarted providing IT staffing services to
Detroit-based automotive companies,
and earned $30,000 in our first year ofoperations.
We faced the usual challenges gettingthe business off the ground landing our
first customers, convincing people tocome work for us, and learning new sets
of skills like legal, finance, and HR.
We also had to address some of thenagging doubts that every entrepreneur
faces, like the questions: Is this really what you are most pas-
sionate about?
Do you believe you truly have some-
thing unique to offer?
As a fledgling company, how willyou attract large corporate clients?
Answering these questions
frankly and thoughtfully broughtthings into sharp focus, and changed
the direction of the company. It be-came clear that the long-term business
opportunity was in taking the work tothe people rather than bringing the
people to the work. It was then thatour mission began to change, and Syn-
tel started to undergo its first transfor-
mation.
The catalyst was the revolution in
global telecommunications that took
place in the early 1990s, which was areal game-changer for the IT industry.From that point forward, the conven-
tional time and materials onsite-staffing
model became pass and globalizationbecame the name of the game.
As Syntel continued to grow and
evolve into a global company, Iquickly faced another steep learning
curve. I experienced the same stark re-alization that every successful entre-
preneur comes to face at some point oranother. I suddenly lay awake at night
telling myself, How do we attract theright talent in order to grow the com-
pany? There are two ways to address
this challenge:
1. Learn new skills yourself and try to
cope with the increased complexity
of the business.2. Recognize the need for quality tal-
ent and establish a process to attract
and retain the best people to grow
the company.
Entrepreneurial Lessons
ImportantBharat Desai
An exercise in continuous evolution and anticipation of
trends; anticipating the direction the market is likely to
take and staying ahead of the curve
By Bharat DesaiThe author is C hairman, Syntel
in myopinion4
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For me, the latter one was the clearchoice.
In 1992, Syntel opened its firstGlobal Development Center in Mumbai,
which signaled the first of two majortransitions first from a staffing business
to a solutions business, then from onsite
delivery to an offshore delivery model.What has happened since then has
been an exercise in continuous evolutionand anticipating trends. From Y2K, the
dot-com bust, the push to offshore-cen-
tric delivery, the emergence of Web-en-abled business services, the growth ofKnowledge Process Outsourcing right
through to remote infrastructure services,
to cloud computing and SaaS, we havetried to anticipate the direction the market
is taking and stay ahead of the curve.Though it may have seemed chaotic
at times simultaneously trying to stayprofitable, maintaining the right mix of
skills, and retraining our workforce to
avoid obsolescence looking back overnearly thirty years in business, it is clear
that several rock-solid constants havetaken both Syntel and the IT industry for-
ward. The following are the importantones among them:
1. The Path toward Globalization is
Irreversible
Syntel itself is proof of this. Today,over 80 percent of our work is per-
formed in India, and we have suc-cessfully transitioned our core legal,
finance, and human resources func-
tions to India. This makes us one ofthe very few companies to have suc-
cessfully made the transition frombeing 100 percent onsite, and posi-
tions us uniquely to help our clientsmake this journey themselves as they
adapt to the new realities of the globaleconomy
Tomorrows entrepreneurs can rest
assured that this trend will continue,as clients increasingly focus attention
on their core businesses and continueto outsource non-essential functions
to improve cost, quality, flexibility,and time-to-market.
2. Talent is irreplaceable
From entry-level programmers totop management, you will sink or
swim based on the skills and talents
of those around you. For example, I
recently stepped back from my posi-tion as CEO to assume the role of amentor, coach, and strategic advisor.
In turning over the reigns to Ke-shav Murugesh, I was able to place
my trust in an experienced, seasonedexecutive who has progressed within
the company from CFO to COO and
now to CEO. At Syntel we believe inpromoting from within, and in con-
tinuously training and educating ouremployees. Over the past three
years, the training, retention, and de-velopment programs launched by
our Global HR Head, Srikanth Karra
and his team have made a huge dif-ference to Syntel, and an enormous
contribution to our growth.I believe that investing in your em-
ployees not only reinforces loyalty,but also ensures that you have the
best talent to develop solutions for
your customer problems. It also cre-ates an atmosphere that is collegial
instead of hierarchical, which bringsout the best in people.
3. World-class Infrastructure is
Critical for Brand Building
Since we opened our first Global De-velopment Center in Mumbai, we
have recognized that world class fa-cilities and infrastructure are critical
to building a strong brand to attract
talent and customers.Since we broke ground on our
Pune Development Campus in 2006,
Syntel has continued to invest ag-
gressively in infrastructure, with thevast majority of capital expenditures
focused on our India-based facilities.Syntel has committed to investing
nearly $100 million in capital ex-
penditure on our Pune and Chennaicampus facilities.
3. Customer for Life
One of the first lessons that any en-trepreneur will learn is that since
landing a client can be so tough, why
not keep them for life? Client cen-tricity, superior execution, and deliv-
ery excellence should not just beviewed as operational goals or met-
rics they are the lifeblood of your business and the path to customer
loyalty.One of the advantages that entre-
preneurs and smaller startup compa-
nies have is their ability to be nimbleand flexible in adapting to customer
needs. Whereas other players in our
space may focus on a factory ap-proach, Syntel has worked over theyears to retain this entrepreneurial
philosophy and to tailor our business
model to stay flexible and adapt tothe changing realities of the global
IT market.
Conclusion
Although the business world has
changed dramatically in the past 30
years, these four principles have re-mained constant. If you have the drive,
stamina, and flexibility to take on thechallenge of running your own business,
these simple precepts should serve youwell in the long run. They will enable
you to think critically and make toughdecisions that will keep you and your
business going through todays uncertain
and turbulent market and into the future.
Good luck! si
Client centricity, superior execution, and delivery
excellence are not just operational goals or metrics
they are the lifeblood of business and the path to
customer loyalty
siliconindiaFrom high profile columnists to Innovations
in business siliconindiagives you relevant
information that truly matters to you.
The only magazine thatcovers business, technology, career, and
entrepreneurship for Indian professionals
in the U.S.
It also presents bold, forthright and objective
views of the trends in the Indian industry.
We bring you information, ideas and insights to
help you navigate through today's changing
business landscape.
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in
silicon i n d i a |10|S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
in
Cloud computing is the latest
super-hyped concept in IT. Ac-cording to Gartners latest Hyper
Cycle Report (2009), cloud computingis a very simple idea, but there are many
issues regarding its scope for deploy-ment that makes it a subject ripe for a
Gartner Hyper Cycle Report.
Gartner examined the maturity of1,650 technologies and trends in 79 in-
dustry areas for this report. Technolo-gies at the peak of inflated expectations
in 2009 include cloud computing, e- books, and Internet TV, while social
software and micro-blogging sites havetipped over the peak and will soon ex-
perience disillusionment among enter- prise users, says Jackie Fenn, Vice
President, Gartner Fellow, and Co-au-
thor of Mastering the Hype Cycle.
As enterprises seek to consume theirIT services in the most cost-effectiveway, interest is growing in drawing a
broad range of services from the cloud,rather than from on-premises equipment.
The level of hype around cloud comput-ing in the IT industry is deafening, with
every vendor expounding its cloud strat-
egy and its variants such as private cloudcomputing and hybrid approaches, com-
pounding the hype.Another report released this year that
paints cloud computing as over-hyped is
the McKinsey Reporttitleair on cloud computing
this report, large organizamoney through adoptio
technology. While clou
optimal for small and
businesses, large compaless if using traditional dtualization is the optima
by implementing virtualicorporations can reduce
toring in depreciation an
Large technology launching new initiative
cating enterprise customhype, cloud computing
catapulted to the forefronand governments use this
cept in the real world. si
Cloud ComputingIT industrys Latest Hype
Several bright minds outsideAmerica fly to the US seeking
better opportunities in places likeSilicon Valley, which is referred as the
entrepreneurs Mecca. However, with
the hue and cry surrounding the H-1Bvisas the flow of immigrants into the US
may get affected, which may diminishthe tech prowess of the most technolog-
ically advanced nation in the world inthe long run.
There was at least one immigrantfounder in 25 percent of tech compa-
nies established in the US between
1995 and 2005, reveals a study by theDuke University and the University of
California. These entities generatedover $52 billion sales, while creating
over 450,000 jobs in 2005.The US administration under
George W Bush pushed for immigration
reforms, which failed to take shape.
Now Barack Obama is in the WhiteHouse; are these reforms on his priority
list? Recently, Obama assured pro-im-migrant activists that the reforms would
not lose its importance to the healthcare
and energy legislations.However, Senators Richard Durbin
and Charles Grassley have sponsored abill to stop the alleged abuse of H-1B
visas. They have introduced a legisla-tion to restrict the number of H1-B visas
issued. These visas are popular among
major technology companies that bringsome of the brightest minds to the US.
The current situation can make theUS less attractive to immigrants, who
may eventually contribute to the coun-
trys growth. Take the examples ofVikram Pandit, Indra Nooyi, or Sanjay
Jha who came to the US and are nowheading some of the largest companies
on the planet.Commentators like CNNs Lou
Dobbs have highlighted a huge reversebrain drain from the US, which has
been his dream, to be closer to reality.
Immigrants that have received their ed-ucation and work experience in the US,
are packing their bags to go back totheir homelands. In addition, for the
first time in five years there is also adecline in the number of foreign stu-
dents seeking admissions in the US
universities.
H1-B Restriction: Silicon Valley to be Hurt
After showcasing their talents to
the world all these years, com-panies in India could face a
huge talent deficit in the comingyears, says a report by Deloitte. Ac-
cording to the report, the reason forthis scarcity is that the country is not
producing enough people equipped
with the right skills required for theglobalized environment.
The New India Manager report alsostates that new talent management
model in companies will have to shiftin their outlook. The report suggests
that the paradigm of scarcity of jobs
should convert to scarcity of talent.Unless a fundamental shift occurs in
the educational system, it will con-tinue to produce degree holders that
will lack skills to operate in a corpo-rate environment, says Manish
Agrawal, Vice President of Strategy
and Innovation at Deloitte.
Agrawal has authored a study onthe evolution of the Indian manager
from the pre-liberalization periodtill now. The report states that glob-
alization has helped Indian man-agers to develop their competencies
and a global outlook that has un-
leashed a lot of creativity and inno-vation in the domestic industry.
However, not many managers inthe country have the required soft
skills such as communication abili-ties for operating in a global envi-
ronment among others. We need to
build such skill sets to enhance ourtalent pools, Agrawal adds.
The Deloitte report states that it re-mains to be seen as to what extent the
country would be able to enhance thecompetency level of its young popula-
tion to make them employable. This is
also a challenge, which the govern-ment would have to deal with in the
years to come, it adds. According toAgrawal, if the shift is made now it
will take 5-10 years to generate a goodquantity of employable talent. si
Talent Deficit to Haunt Indian Firms
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s i l i c o nindia |silicon i n d i a |12|S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
Americans and Britons continueto top the list of foreign arrivals
in India. According to the latestfigures published by the Tourism Min-
istry, out of the 5.37 million foreigntourists who visited India last year,
827,866 were Americans and 787,197
were Britons.The arrivals from Britain saw a de-
cline of 1.1 percent in 2008, while thatfrom the U.S. rose by 3.6 percent. How-
ever, there is a decline in the number oftravelers coming from the neighboring
Pakistan. Interestingly Bangladesh andSri Lanka, the other neighbors, were
third and fourth on the list, accounting
for 540,092 and 228,548 tourists re-spectively. During the same period,
223,587 Canadians, 217,816 Frenchand 209,252 Germans visited India, fol-
lowed by the Japanese (150,732), Aus-tralians (148,055) and Malaysians
(119,040).In 2007, about five million travelers
had visited India (nearly double from2000), according to the Tourism Min-
istry. Visitors from the U.S. accounted
for 15.7 percent of the total.According to a statement made by the
Tourism Ministry, Tourists from these10 countries constituted about 64.34
percent of the total arrivals to India.However, there is a reduction in the
numbers from five countries includingPakistan, Finland, and South Africa. Ar-
rivals from Pakistan reduced by 25.1
percent and from Finland and Kenya by10 percent, compared to 2007. The
number of travelers from Mauritius andSouth Africa fell by 8.5 percent and 6.2
percent respectively.The first five months of 2009
showed a sharp decline in the numberof foreign tourist arrivals in the country,
compared to the same period in 2008.However, officials say that a slight in-
crease has been witnessed from June. Inother areas, the maximum growth was
seen in tourists from West Asia and
Eastern Europe in 2008, an increase of20.9 percent and 18.5 percent over that
of 2007.
Americans, Britons visitedIndia the most in 2008
in
I
ndians are the fastest growing group
of illegal immigrants in the US, ac-cording to the American Community
Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau. Indi-ans in the U.S. are the fastest growing
Asian community as well, and the AsianIndian population in the U.S. grew from
1,679,000 to 2,570,000 in the seven years
from 2000 to 2007.
Indian Americans have the highest
growth rate of 53 percent amongst Asian
American communities. It is alsoamongst the fastest growing ethnic group
in the U.S.. So far, Chinese Americansare the largest Asian American ethnic
group followed by Filipinos and IndianAmericans. Many Indians get into the
U.S. with an H-1B Visa so they do not
have to cross the border illegally. Thesemight contain Indians who go to the U.S.
for better job prospects but end up livingillegally.
The survey also shows that Indian il-legal immigrants have attained a higher
level of education than other illegal im-migrants in the U.S.. Also, another rea-
son for the increase in Indian Americans
could be the fact that Indians can speakEnglish fluently. Immigrants from India
often work for high-tech companies and
perform highly skilled jobs such as engi-
neering and computer programming.
When it comes to illegal immigra-tion, Hispanic illegal immigrants
largely outnumber other undocu-mented immigrants. Even after re-
strictions imposed and the recentdrug-blood bath, Mexicans make up
nearly seven million of the estimated
12 million illegal immigrants. Thenext largest group of Hispanics is Sal-
vadorans and Guatemalans. But Indi-ans are the fastest growing group of
illegal immigrants in the U.S., accord-ing to U.S. Department of Homeland
Security report. As per the report, thereare 270,000 unauthorized Indians in
the U.S. - a 125 percent jump since
2000. This is the largest percentage in-crease of any nationality with more
than 100,000 illegal immigrants. si
Indians the Fastest Growing Illegal Immigrants in the US
Simply Hired, a Silicon Valley
based job portal headed by Gau-
tam Godhwani, has bagged $4.6million in its series D round of funding.
IDG Ventures and Foundation Capital
led the funding to assist the company tofurther augment its presence in the in-ternational market.
With this new round of funding,
we aim to support the future domesticgrowth, increasing the headcount from
50 to 80 in 2009, and accelerate our in-ternational expansion, says Gautam
Godhwani, Co-founder and CEO, Sim-ply Hired. The funding follows 16 con-
secutive quarters of revenue growth and
four quarters of positive cash flow. In-cluding this round of funding, Simply
Hired has raised $22.3 million to date.
According to ComScore and
Nielsen Media, the privately held Sim-ply Hired was the fastest growing job
site in 2008. Its network, where Simply
Hired powers job listings, includesLinkedIn, MySpace, The WashingtonPost, CNNMoney, BusinessWeek, and
Plaxo, reaching 24 million visitors
monthly. This strategy of reaching jobseekers where they are spending their
time on the Web, has earned Simply-Hired.com and its network the ranking
as one of the forty most trafficked web-sites in the US, according to Quantcast.
Job search is a global problem, and
Simply Hired is committed to reaching both active and passive job seekers
globally at both Simply
at other online destinatio
network, says GodhwaFounded in 2003, Si
recently launched local
engines for Brazil, BeItaly, and the Netherlandkets include Australia, C
Germany, India, Spain, a
the company now operatries and seven langua
continents.Godhwani says that
enables Simply Hired to pand its footprint with
sources and facilitates
relationship with the nIDG online properties.
Simply Hired Raises $4.6 millioSeries D round of Funding
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
Gautam Godhwani
The mobile apps space is all therage today in large part thanks to
the app store arms race started byApples iPhone platform. Apple has to
be congratulated and thanked for itsenormously successful marketing cam-
paign evangelizing mobile apps. Now
that consumers have been educated tospend on mobile apps, there is obviously
a lot of entrepreneurial angst directed to-
wards exploiting the new platforms.As a veteran of the industry who has
seen the development and launch of
MIDP1.0, BREW 2.x and WAP appli-cations, we have definitely come a long
way in terms of features and capabilities
afforded by modern day mobile OS plat-
forms such as iPhone 3.0, Blackberry,Windows Mobile 6.0, Android and
many others. Any developer with basicprogramming skills can now develop a
GPS enabled, network-aware app withvideo streaming capabilities integrated
with popular social networking sites!
Perhaps more importantly, any devel-oper can now sell that app to millions of
users.This new era of un-walled gardens
brings a completely new set of chal-lenges for any entrepreneur with a busi-
ness plan that includes mobile apps.
With the commoditization of the techni-cal skills and distribution channels nec-
essary to launch mobile apps, it is backto the basics for entrepreneurs thinking
of creating mobile apps
Marketing. What compelcontent does your app
user that users will actuasupported apps just an i
users paying you)? Howout that your app exists a
its clones? If you can pr
ing answers to these twoyou have the beginning o
business plan.If you cannot answ
tions just yet, then I willyou to dabble in the mo
as a hobbyist. You will g
for the industry, and you k just may strike it lucky
great viral app that makeBut.that is not a busin
CEO SPOT
Mobile Apps Becoming all the Skava provides strategy and execution to brands, retailers and contereach out to consumers across social sites, widgets and mobile device
By Arish Ali, CEO, Skava
Arish Ali
8/14/2019 Silicon India Sep 09 Issue
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Smarter mobile applications that un-
derstand more about you and offer apersonalized experience based on
your usage patterns. There is a wealth of
data about you sitting on your phone. Yourmobile phone knows how many calls and
text messages you send, whom you sendthem to, where you typically send them
from, and much more. And this is infor-mation that is unique to mobilevery lit-
tle of it is available from the Desktop PC.
In the past this information, if used at
all, was primarily used for targeted adver-tising. Today, with RIM, Apple, Google,and Nokia bringing faster, more afford-
able, and more powerful devices to mar-ket than ever before, we are entering a
Smartphone revolution that changes the
game. Thanks to the proliferation of smart-phones and the increasing penetration of
high-speed data networks, it has becomemuch easier to capture all the information
already sitting on the phone, analyze on thehandset or on servers in the cloud, and then
deliver a personalized experience to the
end user. This is exciting.I believe that the top three factors
shaping the industry in the new few yearsare 1) Increasing smartphone penetration,
2) Popularity of the app stores as a distri-bution channel, 3) Faster, more affordable
data networks. The Apple iPhone App-Store has shown us how creative develop-
ers can be when given a powerful platform
and how enthusiastically customers willdownload and try out new apps. As more
of the world adopts Smartphones and
more manufacturers/carown app stores, we wi
wealth of apps offeringservices.
In terms of challenglenge that mobile entrep
is monetization. Despite
the iPhone AppStore, wany long-term sustainab
entirely on the mobileonus will be on develop
enue models are do not vertising and one-off pu
However, just as thternet led to revolution
models like Amazo
Google, we will undoubusiness models emerg
bile apps industry. si
silicon i n d i asilicon i n d i a |14|S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
In the next few years, phones willchange in three fundamental ways
to become a lot smarter than they
are today. Phones will add value bynotifying us of interesting things than
just being used as browsers. A phone isnot a PC. It is an interrupt-based de-
vice that is intended to alert you itrings when someone calls or buzzes
when an SMS comes in. In the same
way, it should proactively notify youof content, people, places in your sur-
roundings that would add value toyour everyday life. You should be able
to use your phone as a phone a de-vice that alerts you, as obtrusively or
unobtrusively, as youd like, of oppor-tunities to socialize, play, work, shop,
watch a show, or just grab a coffee.
Interestingly, location will be a com-modity and will be used in conjunction
with other aspects of a users context
to enrich their experiences. LocationBased Services (LBS) has become a
dirty word for our generation of mobileusers for a good reason historically,
location has been used a little too sim-plistically by most mobile apps. The ex-
ample people give of the holy grail of
LBS is always the same You are walk-ing by a Starbucks, and you get a
coupon sent to your phone. Well fromwhat we know, Starbucks doesnt even
have coupons the occasional unsatis-fied customer may get a free drink
voucher from the barista to use nexttime. And even if they did have
coupons, if all I got all day from loca-
tion based apps is marketing material ofvarious kinds, of course I would hate
LBS too.
Here is what we believe. Location isone very important component, but only
one component of a users context. Whothe user is, what they like, the time of
day, their social graph these are all im-portant inputs to context as well. The
phone has the advantage of always
being with you it knows your location,it can be trained to know whom you are
and what you like, including social re-lationships you enjoy and therefore a
perfect device for you to get ContextBased Services. And in some contexts,
those coupons we talked about do makesense like if you want to shop or are
looking for a cheap place to eat. si
(Aloqa, founded in 2007, is the company, which created application for mobile phones which pushes notifications in real-time
about nearby events and social opportunities wi th relevancy based on the users current location, pre-defined interests, andsocial networks. Aloqa has offices in Palo Alto, CA and Munich, Germany)
CEO SPOTLIGHT
In the last two years, the mobile
handsets have matured to become aviable development platform.
Today, one can leverage the touchscreen interfaces, GPS, accelerometers,
good quality video capture, Wi-Fi ac-
cess capabilities and build very sophis-ticated applications. Secondly
distribution is also there, thanks to theproliferation of marketplaces like Apple
App Store, Nokia Ovi store, AndroidMarket place and so on. In just around
two years, iPhone has thousands of newapplications and growing.
On the other hand, two years back,
most of mobile users were using thephones to call or text someone. Now if
we look at the mobile users, they knowwhat mobile apps are and are choosy
about which they use without their car-
rier involvement. Many are free, so itseasy to try new applications and to
discard them. In fact, most of the newapplications have very limited use and
the user never gets to use them after
the first few tries. This ability to buildsophisticated applications, distribute
easily with out going through alengthy carrier process and get con-
sumers to try them out is creating anunprecedented opportunity for mobile
application vendors.Over the next few years, we will see
consolidation of the Software platforms
(iPhone, Android, Symbian, WindowsMobile) for mobile handsets. In addi-
tion the intense competition among thehandset vendors will drop the prices
considerably making i
for most people.This creates a phen
nity and a challenge forthis space: Its crucial
both in product develop
we monetize. On the pgagement upon first us
tomers need that rush ofirst time they open the
the monetization fronlooking for solutions th
their lives. Value can bsolves a problem or s
fun. Entrepreneurs hav
ative on monetization peting with other ind
with zero overhead anglobal mainstream con
(Qik is a mobile live video streaming platform, which enables anyone to stream video live from their mobile phone
the world. The company is based in Redwood City, CA)
(Sensobi is a Cambridge, Massachusetts based startup building a bettefor business professionals to help you stay on top of your important co
Mobile video players, large andsmall, are currently in a
pitched battle to replicate the
success of online video in the mobilespace. Indeed, the mobile video space
whether it be user-generated-content orpremium content is exploding as the
amount of content being uploaded to theWeb is increasing at a frenzied clip (esti-
mates just for You Tube are that there is
20 hours of video being uploaded everyminute). What makes this so challenging
is the vastly different nature of the onlinevideo platform, which is essentially uni-
form, from the mobile platform, which isalmost completely fragmented across
handsets, operating systems, networks
and now, even app stores. More thanany other factor, fragmentation has been
a barrier to the adoption of mobile video,
and success in the mobile video spacewill be defined by those that can over-
come the fragmentation problem andfind a quick path to monetization.
We belive an on the fly mobilevideo transcoding approach, along with
the ability to use the native browser and
media player of the individual device, isthe best answer to solving the fragmen-
tation problem. Together, they eliminatea significant barrier to adoption, both on
feature phones as well as smart phones.Content is then limited only by what can
be indexed on the Web and there would
be no need to pre-encode or store anyvideos, thereby making it practical to
keep up with the exploding amount of
new devices added weekly and new con-tent uploaded daily.
As for monetization, in-video adver-tising is going to be key. And make no
mistake that the mobile video platformoffers an exceedingly rich potential for
monetization of video since the mobile
phone offers the potential for very spe-cific ad targetingwhether it be demo-
graphic, geographic or by interest. Adynamic mobile video ad-stitching en-
gine will enable taking advantage ofthese ad-targeting opportunities. si
(Vuclip is a mobile video search portal, which allows users access any videos in the
web on mobile. The company is based in Milpitas, CA)
Phones must be Smart, Not Just Smart Phones
Mobile Video: Overcoming Fragmentationissue is Important
Monetization would be the Key Challenge
Mobile Apps: Hot Space to WBy Ajay Kulkarni, CEO, Sensobi
Ajay Kulkarni
By Ramu Sunkara, CEO, Qik Inc
Ramu SunkaraBy Sanjeev Agrawal, CEO, Aloqa Sanjeev Agrawal
By Dr. Nickhil Jakatdar, CEO, Vuclip
Dr. Nickhil Jakatdar
8/14/2019 Silicon India Sep 09 Issue
9/25
s i l i c o ni n d i a
CellSp
CEll phonE t
thE nExt lEv
Expandin
Sara frequents MySpace to
connect with her oldfriends, make new ones,
and drum up jobs. Well,this social networking
savvy homemaker isnt in front of acomputer; instead, she uploads pic-
tures and taps into the celebrated so-
cial network from her cellphone.
During my sons birth, I used theCellSpin app installed in my mobile
phone to post pictures to Flickr, My-
space, and other social networkingwebsites from the hospital. You can
also use it to upload
like YouTube,says a Mobile phones ha
come an essential and our daily lives. With
people being touched every day, the mobile
exceeded 2 billion con
ally. Thats why the m
tions area has becomespaces to watch nowa
The San Jose, CA,
is one such mobile apppany that is all set t
CELLSPIN QUICK FACTS
Founded: 2006
Co-Founders: Bobby Gurvinder
Singh &
Marcos Klein
Space: Mobile
applications
Investors: Angel Investors
CEO: Bobby GurvinderSingh
Headquarters: SanJose, CA
Website: www.cellspin.net
By Jayakisho
COVER ST
Bobby Gurvinder Singh, CEO
8/14/2019 Silicon India Sep 09 Issue
10/25
s i l i c o nindia |silicon i n d i a |18|S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
emergent opportunity to start a revo-lution by expanding the capacity of the
cell phone to the next level. CellSpinsinnovative, user-friendly application,
which is being used by number of so-cial networking enthusiasts across
over 120 countries, and growing with
every new app store launch, enablesthe user to share photos, videos,
audio, and text on the Internet quicklyand painlessly. With our simple and
quick technology, youll never want
to go back to the old way of upload-ing, says a jubilant Bobby Gurvin-der Singh, CellSpin CEO and
Co-founder. As an extension of this
opportunity, today, CellSpin has beensuccessful in extending its products
to the radio and TV stations as well,wherein listeners or viewers can send
audio, video, photos, and text to thewebsites of these stations.
When CellSpin was founded in
2006, social networking was just gain-ing momentum and was expected to be
the next big thing in the Web 2.0arena, founders Bobby Gurvinder
Singh and Marcos Klein, both Ciscoveterans, envisioned the revolutionary
opportunity the convergence of mobileand Web 2.0 was to open up. Whycant the cell phone in your pocket be-
come a fertile territory for the hugely popular social networking trend?
Though social networks take differentforms, they typically link folks with
common interests and values. The mo-
bile variety tends to appeal to thethrongs of young people who have an
insatiable desire to stay connected atall times. And mobiles could also help
in this. The logic was proved perfect.That was the beginning of our jour-
ney. We set out to build the mobile ap-plication that helps users send media
content to a wide range of destinations
from websites, email addresses, andmobiles, which we call as mobile
blogging platform. Just as you receiveemail and SMS messages on your cell,
you can access the status updates,says Singh.
Certainly, mobile blogging isemerging as a hot market segment
with immense potential. According toavailable data, about 10 percent of
adult mobile phone owners in theU.S. regularly access mobile blog-
ging services and this number will al-
most double in 2011. In manyrespects, mobile could be a natural
extension of the PC social network-ing experience in coming days.
Facebook co-founder Dustin
Moskovitz says, citing Facebooksmobile user base that grows fasterthan that of the website, Nowadays
things that are inherently social are
inherently mobile. Thus, phonesprovide immediacy not typically pos-
sible on a PC. What is intriguing isthat folks can comment on a restau-
rant, concert, or dinner date duringthe activity. And friends may not wait
until they get home to tell them how
the date went! For most people, cam-era phones are the place where lifes
precious moments flourish. Snap aphoto of a favorite pet dog, and with
CellSpins technology you can shareyour interest and joy by posting it on
your social networking site directlyfrom the mobile!Well, CellSpin initially had a plan
to build such mobile applications forthe smartphones. However, as the
company evolved they learnt thatsmartphones would occupy only 15
percent of the total mobile segment,
which made the founders to build theapps for non-smartphones as well.
Today, CellSpin has premium applica-tion for 300 plus Smartphone models
worldwide for media upload and mo-bile SMS, MMS, and email support
for all non-smartphones worldwide.So with CellSpin mobile applica-
tion and SMS, MMS, and email serv-
ice, one no longer has to wait to get tohis computer to post audio, video,
photos, and text to the favorite web-sites simultaneously, like Facebook,
MySpace, Blogger, YouTube, Picasa,Flickr, Live Journal, and Live Spaces,
with others to follow. What is inter-esting is that by using the CellSpin
software and by selecting multiplepublishers on the post screen one can
send the content to multiple sites at thesame time making life of a user much
easier, which is our key differentiator.
And CellSpin is the first and only mo- bile application enabling mobile
phone users to seamlessly integratemultimedia content to live eBay auc-
tions, claims Singh.
Today, CellSpin is seeing an ever-growing demand from users acrossthe world. As of now, the company
offers its application free for its
users, as it is mobile advertisementsupported. The application, which is
successful on the iPhone platform aswell, and is soon launching on An-
droid platform, is available in vari-ous app stores, including Apples
iTunes, Blackberry app store, and
Nokias Ovi store. Users, assumingthey are already signed up for an ac-
count, can also download their appsfor Apple iPhone, Blackberry Curve
and Pearl, Blackberry Storm, Win-dows Mobile, Palm OS, and Nokia
S60 at their respective websites.Though the company is currentlyoffering its advertisement-supported
apps for free to its users, it aims tocharge the users for its mobile appli-
cations soon. Though mobile advertis-ing is big, its not growing as fast as it
used to be and as estimated, which
prompted CellSpin to launch premiumapps wherein users need to buy the ap-
plication for use. Also, the big ques-tion for us was sustainability in user
behaviour. Stickiness factor becomesimportant in this business. Once the
user downloads his app, he may be ac-tive for initial few weeks or months.
Later on, peoples interest in using the
app dies down, due to which advertis-ers may pull off. Hence, if you charge
users for the apps, one will get his in-vestment upfront, rather than waiting
for advertisement revenues to fill yourinvestments, adds Singh.
The Extended Opport
Singh says, Let us saradio show, TV show, o
mous blogger, celebrit
do your listeners, vieweteract with you or your
own website. Commuform of blog that allow
community to interact wusing content from bo
the Web on your own w
It was in 2008 thfounders began explori
tential market. Why radio stations, TV statio
organizations? Even thtions want to keep their
teners, readers, and vie
with them. For a typicano easy way to interac
pictures, audio, video,their favorite radio or T
their mobile other than Even radio stations wa
for their listeners to audio, video, or text, f
phones to the stations w
big channels like CNN financial muscle to imp
capability, which maythe case of small and
radio stations. Thats
the needs of the radio scided to approach them
Today, there are aboustations in the U.S, and
and about 2,000 new
Cellspins
innovative,
user-friendly
application enables
the user to share
photos, videos,
audio and text
on the Internet
quickly and
painlessly,
which is being
usedacross
over 120
countries
Mobile
blogging
is emerging as a
hot market
segment with
immense potential.
According to
available data, thereare about10
percentof adult
mobile phone
owners in the U.S.
regularly access
mobile blogging
services and that
will be almost
doublein
2011
8/14/2019 Silicon India Sep 09 Issue
11/25
they are local. However, by integrat-ing with social networking sites
across the countries, we may get theaudience in millions and much more
than we get from the community blogging as the user base could be
bigger and diverse in nature. User be-
haviors are also diverse in nature inboth the categories, informs Singh.
Challenges in the Game
It is not an easy task to build an ap-
plication, which should run on dif-ferent operating systems (OS) whenthere are over six operating systems
out there. What was challenging
was that we had taken every platformwhich is out there into consideration
and write codes for them. Our teamhas to work extensively in the back-
end to support this entire social net-working site as well, explains
Singh. CellSpin has about 18-20
high-end servers sitting in the datacenters along with Amazon servers
that take care of activities of millionsof CellSpin users. Furthermore, we
need to constantly upgrade our appsas well whenever there are updates in
the OSes. This is the biggest chal-lenge for us, he adds.In addition, the company needs to
keep pace with these networkingsites by making necessary changes in
our backend system and connectingwith them so that there is no user in-
terruption due to technical reasons.
And adding new features to the ap- plication is another task CellSpin
carries out in their labs. Attendingrequests of integrating from diverse
social networking sites from differ-ent countries and making this work
on all those 400 plus versions ofsmartphones and non-smartphones is
quite a demanding task, he explains.
The Road Ahead
For CellSpin it was indeed a chal-lenging journey. Though the com-
pany initially started with the visionof becoming a leader in mobile blog-
ging space, now it h provide mobile appli
small and medium meby enabling them reac
people using CellSpiniA company may start
however, over a pericompany should evolv
is the right thing to do,
portunity and money isstrategic direction of
should be, opines Sivately held, angel fun
has been conferred thApplication Award fo
leaders in mobile indselected as one of t he Tnies to launch at DEM
Going forward, w400 million smartphon
be sold by 2010, the cting on the gold mine of
opportunity. Even in
markets like India and3G is set to roll out, it is
opportunities in mobilwell-defined strategies,
is a bright prospect for Cfil its aim to touch the
ited opportunities. Cert
is all set to become thebile social media servi
connects mobile consumonline social networks,
photo storage sites, andcommunity destination
TVs from the pint-sizedcell phones! si
s i l i c o nindia |silicon i n d i a |20|S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
2,000 TV stations, about 100,000 po-tential widget users pertaining to small
and medium businesses in the U.S.and Canada. And the potential world-
wide market for the medium sizedmedia properties is 100,000 widgets.
In India there are about 500 FM sta-
tions as of now, and the numbers arelikely go up to 1,000 by 2010.
Foreseeing this, the companystarted building their second flagship
community blogging product for
this segment. The company has en-hanced the same mobile blogging ap- plication to suit the new platform
wherein the stations can embed one
line of code on their websites and en-able their users to send the media
content to thewebsite by creating auser generated content (UGC) plat-
form. CellSpin UGC platform will provide hosted media storage and
backup for all types of UGC, mobile
application for all smartphonesworldwide for media upload to radio
or TV shows, mobile SMS, MMS,and email support for all non-smart-
phones, integrated live PC Webcamvideo recording and uploading, inte-
grated live PC audio recording anduploading, integrated file-browse ca-pability for pictures, text, video, and
audio uploading inside the UGCwidget for radio or TV shows along
with integrated facilty, security, andspam protection and flagging capa-
bilities for each media type for the
user community.
CellSpin is exactly what terres-trial radio needs to connect with the
social media landscape. Their toolsallow my listeners to interact with
FM radio and its DJs in ways neverbefore possible and as a result my
stations ratings and web page views
have quadrupled. CellSpin truly isRadio 2.0, says Aaron Traylor, Pro-
gram Director, On-Air DJ at GapBroadcasting Radio, one of the
clients of CellSpin that operates 116
radio stations in 24 markets acrossthe USCellSpin.Interestingly, even radio stations
promote CellSpin apps so that more
users can download the apps andmore and more of their users can
stay in touch with the stations. Infact, his exercise could give a
greater mindshare about CellSpin tothe listeners of the station. The com-
pany offers its application on SaaS
model and charges the station basedon the views they had got per show
widget. They are also planning tocharge these radio stations on a
monthly basis.The CellSpin platform is now
being used by 10 radio stations i n theU.S. The company is working with amajor Media Company, which is top
player in the radio industry that sellsdigital technology to radio industry
in the U.S. Cellspin is also workingwith few leading Indian firms to
bring the mobile and community-
blogging platform to local Indianmarket. That will have better inte-
gration with locally popular socialnetworking sites like Orkut, BigAdda
and many more.Well, what is intriguing is that in
terms of acquiring users, the mobile blogging and community blogging
are totally different ballgames. And
even the user patterns differ. Fromboth we are targeting millions of po-
tential users at a single instance.Moreover, as one may be aware, each
radio or TV station or media organi-zation will have millions of users, but
Cellspin
is exactly
what terrestrial
radio needs to
connect with the
social medialandscape. Their
tools allow
Radio stations
listeners to
interact with FM
radio and its
DJs in waysnever before
possible
With
more
than400 million
smartphones
expected to be
sold by 2010,
Cellspin is sitting
on the gold mine
of a huge market
opportunity. Even
in the emerging
markets like India
and China where
3Gis set to roll
out, it is creating
novel
opportunities
8/14/2019 Silicon India Sep 09 Issue
12/25
tune 500 clients all over the U.S., since
the beginning, the companys focushas been the category of companies
who fall between $50-$500 million inrevenues, of which Chakraborty calls
as $50-500 segment. Total address-
able market in this segment is esti-mated as over $2 billion.
Thats why as a nimble, mid-sizedorganization with a deep talent pool,
proven capabilities, Chakraborty be-lieves EC Manage can build compe-
tence quickly and price more
competitively than its competitors orbig players in the market, whose di-
verse portfolio of services creates in-efficiency with SAP/Oracle and whose
high overhead often prices them out ofthe $50-500 segment. We are effi-
cient people. We are not looking at
cheap way of executing things. Ourfocus is fulfilling clients need, which
should be done in an efficient man-ner, explicates Chakraborty. He
claims that the company provides over30-40percent cost advantage com-
pared to its competitors, depending oncase to case.
And that is the reason while many
of the SAP and Oracle applicationservices providers in the market are
floundering without a viable businessmodel, EC Manage has managed to
grow, and grow steadily. As on July31, 2009, the company has registered
consolidated global revenue of $72
million. Today the company has bignames like Accenture, Cognizant,
Synopsys, IBM, which is the latest ac-quisition, as some of its key clients.
The company has its presence in the
San Francisco, San Diego, and Dallas.Internationally the company has of-
fices in the London, Toronto, andCanada along with specialized Global
Support Centers in Hyderabad andBangalore in India.
Other key reason for EC Manages
sustained year-over-year growth sinceits inception, according to
Chakraborty, is the firms steadfastfocus on building deep expertise im-
plementing, customizing and main-
taining, and upgrading SAP andOracle solutions. Were well knownfor our SAP and Oracle experience. It
is why they put faith and trust in EC
Manage. We get the job done right, ontime and on budget, says
Chakraborty. Another differentiator isthat the companys customers, not EC
Manage, own their SAP/Oracle Appli-cations licenses. This helps the com-
pany develop the superb working
relationship with SAP/Oracle thatcould keep their consulting practice
and customer support so strong.
Challenges and the Road Ahead
Despite all these, journey may not be
smooth either. There are few chal-
lenges as well. Particularly, since thecompany is focusing on $50-500
segment, Chakraborty fears of un-certainty in this market segment, as
there have been the instances ofdelay in decision-making and imple-
menting solutions and abrupt termi-nation of projects by the companies.
Not only that. Overall availability of
capital in the market is limited asmost of the companies in this seg-
ment are run by internal accruals.Another key challenge he perceives
is that with the current hue and crysurrounding the H-1B visas, the flow
of immigrants into U.fected, which might c
of good manpower forWell, till date, the
been managing the their internal accrua
going forward, the c
priority would be to grline. We also intend t
rate entity to marke portfolios in the nea
most importantly, th
actively looking folevel partnership with cle. As we stepped on
in the IT consulting
ness, we embarked onQuality Journey to pr
achieving SEI-CMMLevel 3 certification
end. Our executive teathe challenges that aw
pany, but the team is
ted to deliver only theto our compan
Chakraborty.
Though the global scape was drastically ch
going difficulties affectin
players, the company is portunities which is yet
rently, the company is stSAP practice in prepa
challenges and opportever-changing business
next decade, EC-Managtion itself as a choice S
services provider to lea
ners in the West Coast. EC Manage being focus
becoming key solution space rather than just a se
it is well prepared, anachieve its growth goal
EC MANAGE AT A GLANCE
Founded: 1999
Space: SAP Applications Services
CEO: Rabi Chakraborty
Global Headcount: Over 692
Headquarters: Fremont, CA
Global Revenue: $72 million as on July 31, 2009
Website: www.ec-manage.com
Betting on EfficiencyEC Manage
silicon india |silicon i n d i a |22|S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
When we
approacha client,
we do notsound as
just another SAP and Oracle Applica-
tions services provider. We work oncore of the products as we have the
team with deep expertise, few ofwhich are worked before in develop-
ment of these applications, which is
our key value proposition to theclient, claims Rabi Chakraborty,
CEO of Fremont, CA based EC Man-age. The 10-year old IT services com-
pany, incorporated in April 1999 provides SAP application services;
offshore development; outsource de-velopment; and workforce manage-
ment services to companies in the lifesciences, retail, financial services, tele-
com and media, and utility/energy in-
dustries. Interestingly, the companyhas also indigenously developed few
applications which SAP and Oracledoesnt offer and could seamlessly
work hand-in hand with larger frame-works like SAP and Oracle.
It was during 2002, whenChakraborty, an Oracle veteran, andhis team decided to bestow a whole
new outlook for the company, whichwas till then working on web tech-
nologies, Java, J2E platforms, and pro-
viding consulting services apart from
developing several small extension of products. We found applications
services would be the preeminent areato work as we believed that in coming
times businesses need to pursue the
business applications in order to sur-vive and be efficient and hence we
began with offering Oracle, Peoplesoftapplications services. In 2004, we
started on SAP applications services as
well. In 2006 we started on develop-ment of our own frameworks, like
eMed Report, a health records man-agement solution and eWork Bench, a
workforce management solutionwhich are hugely appreciated by our
customers, says Chakraborty.With hundreds of ERP solutions
vendors and service providers floatingaround, it is interesting to note that
why EC Manage stands out from the
crowd. On the one hand, you have bigfirms who threw bodies at implemen-
tation projects and clocked big timefees, and on the other hand you had
these small-to-big players who werefinding immigration loopholes and
building body shops. Despite all these,as a competent team firm off the street,EC Manage has been betting on their
core expertise and domain knowledge.Our consultants in the company
pride themselves with their successful
stints on projects on technology do-
main solutions such as SAP, Oracle,PeopleSoft, Microsoft, Java, and
mainframe/legacy systems. We followa framework that allows us to ap-
proach a much broader client sector.
We recognize that each organizationhas its own way of doing business and
as such may require a custom fitted so-lution that is technically precise and
form fitted to their business needs,
explicates Chakraborty. To make thishappen, EC-Manage, which is now
grown into over 692 people organiza-tion globally, deploys a wide range of
technology professionals including de-velopers, business analysts, subject
matter experts, specialists in database,networking, and others, interestingly,
all having average expertise of overfive years.
Focusing On $50-$500 Segment
Today, most industry experts agree
that the large enterprise market forSAP and Oracle solutions is nearing
saturation. There is also a general con-sensus among experts that the market
for selling SAP and Oracle solutionsto small and midsize companies isnearing an inflection point and is
poised for rapid growth. However,though EC-Manage maintains a long
history of project delivery for its For-
Competency&
Company Spotlight: By Jayakishore Bayadi
We follow a framework that allows us to approach a much br
sector. We recognize that each organization has its own way o
business and as such may require a custom fitted solution tha
technically precise and form fitted to their business needs
Rabi Chakraborty
8/14/2019 Silicon India Sep 09 Issue
13/25
The Web is a primary chan-nel for driving sales, cus-
tomer loyalty, andoperational efficiencies; so
building an effective Web
presence is clearly business-critical. In-vesting in the right Web initiatives can
also quickly deliver a meaningful return
on investment (ROI). Web ExperienceManagement (WEM) capabilities canenable enterprises build and deploy an
effective Web presence that will helpdrive revenue and cost savings. This
makes it easy for business users to man-
age the Web content, campaigns, and thewebsites as a whole and deliver a rele-
vant and engaging experience to websitevisitors. However, in todays challenging
economic scenario many enterpriseshave become cautious about major new
technology investments. To secure a
budget for these important initiatives, onemust therefore demonstrate a positive
ROI from the Web projects. Fortunately,one can make a compelling case for
WEM using a straightforward method ofROI calculation and measurement.
The solution begins with outlining a
business case for the WEM initiativesand determining the metrics most impor-
tant to your business that WEM projects
can have an impact on. From there,
straightforward ROI projections can be
created based on potential bottomline aswell as top line improvements. These
projections can help get your projectsfunded and off the ground; and can also
demonstrate success to your organizationas the project progresses.
From Managing Content to Managing
User Experience
The Web is critical to a positive customerexperience overall. Organizations have
realized that to be effective in marketing,customer service, internal and external
communications, and more, they need todeliver highly relevant content and a rich
and interactive customer experience on-
line. According to Forrester, 63 percent
of WCM decision makers view im-proved customer experiences as a goalfor Web content management imple-
mentations. WEM capabilities are the setof tools the marketing and customer ex-
perience professionals need for easily
managing and updating Web content and
for transforming the site visitors Web ex-
perience as rich and effective as possible.The right WEM platform not only sup-
ports revenue-generating activities, butalso drives significant operating cost sav-
ings by enabling organizations to engagea broad audience in a targeted manner, to
encourage communities around theirproducts and services, and to manage a
large Web presence with ease. WEM ca-
pabilities are thus central to driving bothtop and bottomline business results.
WEM solutions offer the ability thatenable business users to collaborate
around Web content, author content on-line, design the site layout, publish con-
tent to the live website, create targeted
campaigns for online visitors, dynami-
cally deliver the right content to the rightsite visitor in the right language, analyzeand optimize the effectiveness of Web
content, and enable online communityinteractions with user-generated content.
With WEM, organizations can centrally
manage and globally deliver a rich expe-
rience and consistent branding acrossmultiple sites in multiple languages, sup-
porting and utilizing a diverse set of con-
tent contributors.Fig1: The components of WEM
Driving Top Line SuccessBy offering an engaging online customerexperience, organizations across many
industries can gain tremendous benefits,including increased site traffic, conver-
sion rates, customer advocacy, and cus-
tomer loyalty. Organizations can driverevenue-using WEM through several key
techniques:
Increasing return visits and loy-
alty:With the relevant content and anengaging Web presence, organiza-
tions can influence the prospects, cus-
tomers, partners, and other sitevisitors to return more often and rec-
ommend the organizations productsand services to others. For companies
selling online ad space, this leads togreater revenue through more eye-
balls on the site. For organizations
selling products, this leads to a greaterlikelihood for prospects to convert
into customers, as well as shortened
sales cycles. For information-based
services this leads to a higher qualityservice being delivered, driving sub-
scriptions and readership.
Increasing online conversion rates:
Through enabling targeted content
and campaigns and making it easy
to optimize these campaigns regularly WEM can help increase conversionrates as well as upselling and cross
selling. With targeted promotions andrecommendations, organizations can
provide site visitors with the most rel-
evant information based on their pref-erences, needs, or stage in the sales
cycle, making them more likely toregister and make purchases.
Improving time to market: By
launching new onlin
promotions more quitions can realize the g
programs sooner, as w
rapidly to new develoket changes. For exam
that is able to post fr
during a major newswincrease page views sthus its reputation an
well. In the meanwcompany that can get
a new product or ser
online faster can seethose new capabilities
Fig2: A model for the to
results organizations can
plementing WEM
With WEM, organizations can centrally manage and globally
deliver a rich customer experience and consistent branding
across multiple sites in multiple languages
silicon i n d i a |silicon i n d i a |24|S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
Reduce Time to
MarketStratergies
Metrics
Increase Return
Visits and SiteStickiness
Increase
Conversion Rates
Time to publishtime-sensitive
content/news
Time to luanch new
campaigns and
products online
Number of siteVisitors
Number of pageviews per visitor
Time spent on site
Volume of UGC
items posted
Ratio of visitors:purchasers
Ratio of visitors:registrants
WEM Revenue Generation Net Benet Model
ROI from Web Expe rience Management
Technology: By Loren Weinberg & Elaine ChenLoren Weinberg, Senior VP, Marketing and Product Managementand Elaine Chen, Director of Marketing, FatWire Software
Web ExperienceManagement
Participate
Author
Design
Publish
Target
Deliver
Analyze Conceptualize
0
10
20
30
40
50
Q
MAKING THE CASEFig1
Fig2
September 12 200
8/14/2019 Silicon India Sep 09 Issue
14/25
Driving Efficiencies and Saving
Time
WEM solutions can provide signifi-
cant savings by minimizing theamount of time it takes to perform
routine site maintenance tasks, and en-abling IT and business resources to be
used more strategically. The key effi-ciency drivers include:
Increasing IT output: By en-
abling marketers, content contrib-utors, and other lines of business
staff to author and edit content,WEM solutions can create dra-
matic savings by taking the burdenoff the IT staff that perform the
daily content management tasks. IT
resources can thus be used insteadon higher-value technical tasks.
For example, a major financialcompany has been able to support
over 100 sites and 150 differentcontent contributors globally with
a team of only four developers,
driving tremendous efficiencies fortheir business and enabling a small
development team to strategicallyand successfully support a global
business.
Increasing content contributor
and marketer output: Easy-to-usetools for managing website content
and campaigns can also provide the
marketing department and theother lines of business with great
efficiency. With intuitive tools,business people can more quickly
and effectively manage content andcampaigns without having to wait
in a queue for assistance from tech-
nical staff. Reduced time in creat-
ing and editing content, finding andreusing content, and creating and
launching online campaigns leadsdirectly to greater business effi-
ciency. The user-friendly interfacescan also limit training time re-
quired and encourage a high rate of
adoption of WEM tools. Increasing customer service effi-
ciency: Using WEM tools to createand maintain an up-to-date cus-
tomer support site with the contenttargeted at the individual cus-
tomers needs can result in majorsavings. By enabling customer
self-service and encouraging them
to go online rather than call thecustomer service phone center, or-
ganizations can deliver high-qual-ity customer service with limited
resources. For example, a globaltechnology company was able to
cut support center call volume by
half after implementing a new dy-namic customer support site, sav-
ing millions of dollars per year.Once bottomline cost savings
are calculated, they can then be addedto top line revenue increases to pro-
duce the net benefit of implementing
the WEM solution.Fig3: A model for the savings organi-
zations can achieve by implementing
WEM
Net Benefit and ROI
Once an organization has calculated
the projected net benefit of the solu-tion based on the metrics most rele-
vant to its goals and strategies, thisnumber should be compared to the
total cost of ownership (TCO) for theWEM solution. TCO is calculated by
adding software license fees, profes-sional services costs for implementa-
tion, and ongoing maintenance and
support fees for the WEM project.The TCO of any pre-existing Web
content management system shouldbe subtracted from this amount to
calculate the true incremental TCOof the new system.
With both projected net benefitand incremental TCO, one can de-
termine how quickly the investmentmade in the WEM can be paid back.
Using these data points, the paybacktime in months and subsequently the
annual ROI payback percentage one
can expect to achieve can be calcu-lated. These calculations are critical
to building a strong business casefor investment, and for showing the
success of WEM projects over time. Fig4: ROI worksheet
One final note: In addition to the
measurable ROI, it is also importantto consider the added non-financial
benefits the WEM can provide such as higher customer satisfaction
and loyalty, an enhanced brandimage, and improved employee job
satisfaction and performance. No
matter what solution or approachyou choose, continuing to measure
and analyze your results over timewill be key to achieving your busi-
ness goals and showing results toyour stakeholders. si
silicon i n d i a |26|S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
Calculating ROI
Net Benet Value
Revenue increase annual net benet A
Cost savings annual net benet B
Total annual net benet (A+B) C)
Incremental TCO
Proposed solution cost D
Current solution cost E
Total net cost (D-E)
Yearly ROI C/F
Payback in months F/(C/12
IncreaseContentContributor andMarketer Output
ImproveCustomerServiceEciency
IncreaseIT Output
Time to create/edit
content
Page layouttime
Time to publish
Targetedcontent
creation time
Training time
Collaboration time
Numberof customer
service calls
Time to supportcontent
authoring
Time to supportpage
layout
Time to supportcontent
publishing
Time to supportcampaign
management
Time to supportcontent
repurposing
Time to train businessusers
Business IT
Stratergies
WEM CostOptimization NetBenetModel
Metrics
Fig3
Fig4
A WEM solution can create
dramatic savings by taking
the burden off the IT staff
that perform the daily con-
tent management tasks as it
enables marketers, content
contributors, and others to
author and edit content
September 12, 200
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Todays new service offerings arepossible from the convergence of not
only the wireline and mobile com-munications sectors, but also from
bringing together the communica-
tions, computing, media, entertain-ment, and advertising industries.
Still, customer satisfaction remainsone of the key differentiators in the
battle for market share in a con-verged services world.
A solution for this problem is not
to simply add another system or im-prove a business process, but to con-
tinually monitor what the customersexperience.
In this article, we talk in detailabout Customer Experience Manage-
ment (CEM) such as What isCEM?, Why do we need it? and
How to successfully implement it?.
Customer Experience Manage-
ment (CEM)
CEM is a strategic approach taken
by the CSP to augment businessprocesses and integrate a myriad of
data sets, software systems,
processes, and people to positivelyimpact the subscribers experience.
In order for a business to assessthe customer experience (CE), each
interaction must be managed acrosseach part of the CSP business
throughout the customer life cycle.
Customer Experience Manage-ment might be characterized as the
next logical generation of ServiceQuality Monitoring (SQM). CEM
truly connects the monitoring and as-surance functions of the OSS to busi-
ness objectives - ultimately leading
to enhanced customer satisfactionand a stronger business bottom line.
CEM assumes that products andservices are no longer sufficient to
satisfy the customer and elevatethe value proposition to the next
level of an experience.
In addition, it promotes an equal
relationship between customers
with CSP and ongoing dialogue
that improves and strengthensquality and length of the relation-
ships.
Companies that have adapted
CEM strategies have placed an
emphasis on their system, process,people, and customers as a part of
the experience creation and deliv-ery. It is a strategy and not point
solution.
Importance of CEM for CSPs
A telco has lot many systems in the
world to address Customer Satisfac-tion from various perspectives. Then
why we need CEM? Lets look intosome of the reasons:
CSPs are investing billions of dol-
lars in capital to provide conver-gent mobile and fixed broadband
services to consumers and busi-nesses but this has not led to im-
provements in customer loyalty,which is reflected in price conces-
sions and churn in mature seg-
ments of their business. CSPs may have the most innova-
tive loyalty and retention pro-grams, highly competitive
marketing for their products andservices; however, the churn rate
is increasing.
CSPs are adding more and moreproduct and service offerings for
their customers; and these cus-tomers are experiencing and per-
ceiving them through new andemerging touch-points and chan-
nels. Managing such a dynamicand complex mix of channels is a
nightmare. In many cases sub-
scriber information is scattered
throughout differeorganization, makin
gain a unified vietomer. It creates in
tomer experien
channels.Currently, ARP
and churn is increasin business model. As
nearly ten times costlie
customer than to retai
How do you manag
lenges?
1. A management sy
vides you quantifiameasure results.
2. A scientific approa
explains the relatiosatisfaction, spend
and customer prefommended produc
3. A sound and solidprinciples to corre
experience and CS
egy.
4. And a systematic f
methodology to destor effective custom
delivery across muand touch-points t
entire customer life
CSP can significantlyReturn on Investmen
well-implemented Cusence strategy.
CEM for CSPs, HOW
CSPs should have a proach, a cyclic model
ful in CEM.
(see fig1)
A Journey in CEMCustomers Perceive Value Based
on Experiences They Receive
Introduction
I
n the extremely competitive telecom sector customer satisfaction is a vital metric ofsuccess.Customer Experience Management (CEM) is a crucial aspect for communi-cation service providers (CSP) that aim at achieving this. In the current market sce-nario, CSPs are dealing with a dynamically changing economy. As of today, we havemoved from a product economy to a service economy, and heading towards an ex-
perience economy, which adds a level of emotion, that was previously missing in a p rod-uct or a service economy. The complexity of dealing with emotions of a customerincreases, given the fact that todays customers are using multiple channels and complexmethods to do business, like IVR, Web, contact center, email, chat, and POS.
CEM emphasizes the duration of
relationship and treatment of thecustomer as a journey, placing a
greater emphasis on every interaction
that leads to the experience of the
delivery of promised relationships
BUSINESS: By Karthikeyan KrishnanThe author is Lead Consultant at Collabera
8/14/2019 Silicon India Sep 09 Issue
16/25
s i l i c o nindia |silicon i n d i a |30|S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
FAQ: CSPs already have CRM.
Does one need CEM?
Difference between CRM and
CEM
Traditionally, CRM systems have
been internal or operational centric;they are about profiling and collect-
ing customer data for marketing and
cross selling purposes. Too often,
the emphasis has been on the com-
panys goals and not necessarily
what the customer wants.
CRM was born originally to
maximize revenues and profits from
its loyal customers. With CRM therewere very few, if any, listening
mechanisms or other aspects of mu-tual relationships. Most companies
simply viewed it as a quick way toincrease revenues from existing cus-
tomers.
CRM can be explained in the fol-lowing way: Every time the company
interacts with the customer, the com-pany learns something new. By cap-
turing, sharing, analyzing, and acting
upon this information, companiescan better manage individual cus-
tomer profitability.Gartner Research says that
around $46 billion was spent on
CRM systems to help institutions getcloser to their customers. 55 percent
of all these CRM programs actually
drive customers away and diluteearnings, bringing forth this empha-
sis on customer experience.CEM, on the other hand, is highly
customer-centric and utilizes sys-tems, technologies, and simplified
processes to improve the customers
experience with the company.
CEM is emphasizing the lengthof the relationship and the treatment
of the customer as a journey and notas a destination. In addition CEM
places a greater emphasis on every
interaction, thus leading to the cre-ation of experience to the delivery of
those promised relationships to thedesired target customers.
Customer Experience Manage-ment is turning the customer experi-
ence towards company process and
tunes it accordingly. CEMs premiseis almost the mirror image. It says
that every time a company and a cus-tomer interact, the customer learns
something about the company. De- pending upon what is learned from
each experience, customers may altertheir behavior in ways that affect
their individual profitability. Thus,
by managing these experiences, com- panies can orchestrate more prof-
itable relationships with theircustomers.
Customer-Centric Journey: Sum-
mary
In todays competitive communica-tions market efficient customer ac-
quisition and retention is critical; andservice providers are locked in a bat-
tle for customers and wallet share. Inresponse to the competitive pressure,
many service providers are moving
from a network-centric to a cus-tomer-centric mindset in order to
provide excellent customer service, build brand loyalty, and maximize
profitability.
Key aspects:
CEM is a strategy involving Sys-tems, Processes, People, and not a
point solution CEM is different from CRM
CEM is a continuous strategy andnot one-time implementation
A successful CEM will enable a CSPto conquer the last frontier: positive
customer experience is a strategic
differentiator. si
CRM was born originally to
maximize revenues and prof-
its from loyal customers.
CEM differs from it in that it
aims at managing each cus-
tomers experiences and
learning and mutually bene-
fiting from them
STEP1: Discover
Identify CEImprovementAreas Identify Indicators
Identify Metrics Note:You shoulduse one ofthe Customer
Experience AnalyticstoolThat willhelp
STEP2: Benchmark your business
Identify CESpecicBiz Scenarios
Analysisof yourperformanceagainstCEMetrics
Determine yourGoal
As- IsAnalysisGapAnalysis
STEP3: Implement
Incrementalchangesin System,Process, and
People to achieve thebenchmarkedgoals
STEP4: Validate
CustomerExperience Resultsagainstmeasured attributesor
metricsparameters
fig1
The Infrastructure sector in India is traversing
through one of its most interesting phasestoday. If we look at our growth pattern over
the past few years, we will realize how im-portant it is for a country to have a strong in-
frastructure to enable growth and development. Itsimperative that the nation prepares itself for the future
and the next anticipated growth curve. I am happy with
the fact that our government is pro-development and willlook into the issue with utmost concern and expedite the
necessary initiatives.Infrastructure projects, such as urban public trans-
port systems like metros, expressways, superior qualityhighways, flyovers, and world class airports will enable
us achieve our dreams however, these projects need to
be envisioned with a long term perspective.There is a huge opportunity for other allied sectors to
participate in the infrastructure sectors growth acrossIndia. A huge gap in demand and supply of power, addi-
tionally plagued by the losses in transmission and distri-
bution provides an opportunity to augment thisrequirement. We would need to up the power generation
as well as make sure that proper transmission and distri-bution