|
Sci Tech
Driving the `e-mandi'
|
Enabling companies to graduate from bricks to clicks to sell their wares, is the latest business opportunity. Anand Parthasarathy discovers that many of the top international players in this emerging niche have `desi' origins.
|
FACT ONE: When Dell Computers promises customers of its `DellDirect' services that a PC to their own specification will be delivered within seven days of receiving an emailed order, it means just that. Orders received over night at its Penang, Malaysia plant are often indented in the morning and assembled and tested the same day and shipped by an aircraft the same evening.
This calls for lightning-quick business processes.. and many elements of Dell's quick-response manufacturing and distribution can be attributed to its Supply Chain Management (SCM) system created for it by a Dallas, Texas (U.S.)-based company called i2. It was founded in 1988 by two Indians, Sanjiv Sidhu and Ken Sharma and today serves nearly 1500 customers worldwide, who use its solutions to sell phones ( Nokia), computers ( IBM and HP/Compaq) , potato chips (Frito Lays) and paints ( Asian Paints).
Fact Two: Within the broad spectrum of SCM has emerged a sub niche: to relieve an enterprise of all the hassles that accompany the buying process. Purchase and procurement, possibly the last bastion of in-house processing, is the latest to fall before the inexorable logic of outsourcing: this has created a new business process niche (and yet another acronym!) for what is being called Procurement Solutions Provider (PSP).
Three years ago `01Markets', a Wipro company became the first Indian player to set up a presence as PSP. Today it handles procurement for companies as varied as Gillette and ICI Paints, HDFC Bank and Hindustan Lever with a customer footprint that stretches across Asia and the Pacific Rim.
Fact Three: Texas Instruments is proud that its response time to technical, commercial inquiries, as well as internal requests for information, is less than 700 milliseconds with a system uptime of 99 per cent.
It uses SAP as its core Enterprise Resource Planning tool and i2 as its supply chain solution. But to make the whole enterprise work in real time, it utilises the expertise of the Irving, Texas-based consulting services firm Optimal Solutions Integration Inc.
It was founded in 1995 by Gurvendra Suri, a computer science graduate from M.N.R Engineering College Allahabad. Agencies of the US Department of Defence use Optimal-designed real time architectures to enable rapid deployment of logistics and material in military theatres. Mr Suri, Optimal's CEO, expresses the core expertise of his company as the ability to tell an enterprise: `Get Real' — and help it do just that.
A cyber journey through the byways of e-buying and selling is a voyage of discovery. It is also a Discovery of India — because almost every new outfit, or niche seems to be sport a `desi' name tag.
These are not just the 100th and 101th players in that particular `maidan'. They are the pioneers; the top ranking teams which have carved out exclusive pieces of the turf where they are the leaders, for quality and quantity.
And the pace of development is so fast that the following developments all took place within the last four weeks:* 01Markets has acquired a roster of 89 customers and handled their procurement to the tune of Rs 7.2 billion, mostly through the Reverse Auction route.
And as the icing on its third birthday, in late May, 01markets, announced in Bangalore that the company had just received ISO 9000:2000 certification for its eProcurement services. Mythili Ramesh, Vice President and Business Head, explains that purchased products and services are the single largest expense in most organisations and account for 50 to 55 paise in every rupee spent. Even a 5 per cent saving in procurement costs translates into an effective sales growth of 30 percent.
Many of 01markets' new customers are abroad — and to them the sheer administrative cost of a purchase transaction ($ 100 and more in the U.S.) can itself be a major incentive to use an India-based PSP. Globally, procurement outsourcing was expected to touch nearly $ 10 billion within 3 years — and this early Indian player in the emerging niche was gearing to grab a good chunk of this business.
* A new frontier for real time enterprise is emerging — and it is right here in India which is fast becoming the world's back office. So Optimal has this month set up an Indian subsidiary based in Bangalore. It will create the next generation of solutions for a global market and hopes to grow from 30 to 300 consultants within 3 years.
* Pallab Chatterjee, i2's US-based President now on a brief visit, says the Bangalore-based development centre is the place where many of its solutions are crafted — including major chunks of its latest ( June 4) suite, `i2Six' which addresses optimisation in key activities like, spending, product sourcing, revenue, profit and logistics. One of Optimal's new thrust areas is creating a supply chain Web server.
Meanwhile, other canny players are also using the Web to provide a backbone of communication services which have made them market leaders in their chosen niches. And surprise, surprise, here too there is an Indian presence in the topmost echelons.
The way to conduct meetings in the Internet Age, says Subrah Iyar, is not face to face, involving costly and time consuming travel, but through interactive multimedia communication: harnessing the Internet. Mr Iyar is CEO of WebEx Communications which has just been rated by `Forbes' magazine to be the world's fastest growing technology company. An electrical engineering graduate from IIT Mumbai, he co- founded WebEx in 1996 and saw it become the market leader with turnover growing from $ 2 million to $ 140 million within four years and a two-third share of the global market. Last week, WebEx joined hands with CyberBazaar, the Indian market leader in web conferencing, who pioneered e-conferencing services in this country five years ago to establish a node in this country and offer joint services.
The anchor service that the two partners will leverage, is the WebEx MediaTone Network, which facilitates collaborative work using voice and video-conferencing as well as the exchange of digital data files across continents.
The solution which harnesses a leased sub-layer on the public Internet, is being marketed by national telecom service providers like AT&T, NTT, British Telecom and France Telecom in their own countries and used by 7600 customers worldwide including Intel, Boeing, Kodak and Fujitsu.
Communication is great — but it is no replacement for the printed document. Electronics for Imaging (EFI) is a world leader in imaging solutions, well known in the corporate world for its PrintMe solution. It enables executives `on the hoof' to download their documents, graphics, spreadsheets etc from a worldwide network of specially enabled printers.
What was lacking was a mobile edge — the ability to control such operations distantly from a mobile phone. The key technology is the contribution of EFI's Unimobile Division, an Indian brains trust born in Bangalore and headed by IIT Mumbai alumnus Vas Bhandarkar.
Last week, the parent company, came back to its creative roots, to set up one of its largest R&D centres here. ``India is the place where it's all happening now in the outsourced IT Services arena.'' says Subrah Iyar. Which is why companies like EFI and WebEx, i2 and Optimal, increasingly come `home' to India, with globally recognized solutions honed by Indian business savvy.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Sci Tech
|
