| Express
Computer , April 4, 2002 |
Geodesic shows the way for startups |
| Srikant R P
& Rajneesh De |
| There
is no foolproof formula for success. But as a startup
that has remained profitable and survived every kind
of meltdown and slowdown that has its way, Geodesic
Information Systems definitely seems to have the right
ingredient. Srikanth R P & Rajneeh De hone in on
the secret of Geodesic's success |
| |
 |
Pankaj
Kumar says,
"with IM emerging as a killer application,
the company’s product, Mundu, looks set to
rake in the moolah" |
|
| |
 hat
is the recipe for being a successful technology startup?
Those firms that believed that bold ideas and solid
financing were the only two important ingredients required
to make it big, are no longer present on the global
scene today.In an era when smaller technology companies
in India are increasingly getting wiped out, it is interesting
to note the success of a few tech startups that have
made it against all odds, pretty much on their own steam
at that.The ones that have survived the meltdown are
now being looked upon as heroes by both entrepreneurs
and venture capitalists alike. A key pointer to the
success of any startup has been the firm's ability to
manage scarce resources effectively and create a market
of its own where there was hitherto none. |
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| Mumbai-based
Geodesic Information Systems can definitely be considered
to be one of the proud flag-bearers of this rare genre.
It has not only survived the meltdown but has been making
profits right from inception. Quite unlike the flashy
ostentation that characterised the startups of the dotcom
boom time, the Geodesic in suburban Mumbai is nondescript
and utilitarian, a sign of a true startup that knows
that survival and not plush surroundings is key to success.
|
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| Geodesic
kicked off operations ambitiously on "Fool's Day" in
the year 1999, and like any other technology startup,
had the objective of developing innovative products.
The year 1999 was when just about everyone - from corporates
to pan-wallahs - was jumping onto the dotcom bandwagon.Everybody
wanted to launch an e-commerce site and cash in on the
action. Geodesic too was no different, and launced its
e-commerce site, hamarashop.com. The starategy at that
point of time was to reach out ot people by getting
all the best stores in town to partner with the site
and offer their products for sale. The plan back then
was to launch a thousand kiosks across Mumbai and other
cities to facilitate e-commerce transactions. |
| |
| Realising
that larger shops would go online themselves.Geodesic
started looking at existing company sites and picked
up information from other sites to offer its users a
comparative view between different products. Says Kiran
Kulkarni, director, Geodesic, "We had the advantage
of cross promotions between different products and unlike
the others who were backed by bigger names, we did a
turnoer of Rs 3.75 crore in the first year itself."Kulkarni
estimates the profits to be in the range of 17 percent
of the turnover. |
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 |
According
to Kiran Kulkarni,
"the company’s services have kept its
products alive" |
|
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 |
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| Being
far from foolish, the company also realised early that
a focus on e-commerce alone, while it was still in a
nascent stage, could prove to be suicidal. As dotcom
after dotcom went bust, it was quite clear that e-cmmerce
was not yet happening in sufficient volumes to sustain
all the players.So Geodesic decided that it would earn
revenue from its indigenously developed e-commerce engine
itself, by licensing it out.Kulkarni says that Geodesic's
e-commerce engine was built from the ground up completely
plug-and-play by design,allowing users the flexiblility
of adding and removing components freely.In fact, this
engine ultimately proved to be a stable revenue earner
for the company - it's been licensed to two portals,
iVast and Concentric.Simultaneously, Geodesic continued
to offer software services, and does so even today.As
Kulkarni aptly puts it, "Our services have kept out
products alive.". |
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| After
the heady euphoria of 1999-2000,came the great meltdown
that left most dotcoms struggling to keep afloat. Unlike
most of its peers, Geodesic had been cautious on spending.
It scaled down most of the grandiose plans that had
been made and scrapped the proposed kiosk project altogether.
It owes its survival to the focus on projects and the
licensing of the commerce engine. |
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| Since
there were a lot of players in the e-commerce space,Geodesic
know it has to do something different. The Instant Messaging
(IM) space was one that had not attract much notice
back them. And Geodesic hit the jackpot when it licensed
'Mumdu', its instant messaging product ot the Indiatimes
portal. Says Pankaj Kumar, managing director, Geodesic,
"People have begun to relaise the vast potential of
instant messsging.Online auctions, e-commerce, knowledge
management,CRM, inventory control and clearance,stock
market activities - are all potential applications which
can be done with the help of instant messaging." Today,
due to its tie-up with Indiatimes, Mumdu is the third
largest messenger in the country with ten percent of
the market share after Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger.
|
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| A
killer product is all a start up needs and Geodesic
has found just that with Mundu.The Potential of the
product is undoubtedly huge, as can be seen from these
statistics; Use of instant messaging in corporates is
up 110 percent over the last year. A research study
by Forrester Research predicts that by the year 2005,
two-thirds of all corporate users of e-mail would be
using instant messaging as well.As more and more business
gets conducted over IM,corporations are looking actively
on the value of integrating IM with their business applications.Industry
reports estimate that one billion messages are sent
each day and that this figure will soon surpass the
1.9 billion phone calls placed each day.The Instant
Messaging (IM) market is estimated to grow from 250
million users world-wide to around 500 million in 2004,
a growth rate of over 100 percent. |
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| The
one thing that holds back IM from being adopted as a
standard is the lak of interoperability between different
instant messenger software products.It is exactly this
vacuum that Geodesic hopes to fill in with its product.Currently,
Mumdu has a unique advantage over other competing brands
as it is a messenger that is compatible with all the
industry leaders like AOL, MSN, ICQ and Yahoo.With the
core technology in place, Geodeisc hopes to provide
in Mundu a kind of brand that would fit the needs of
businesses of all sizes.Th potential target segments
that Geodeisc is looking at include call centers,finance
and IT organizations, providing an instant messaging
network for business-to-employee and business-to-customer.With
its ablility to manage communications over multiple
channels, i.e. web text chat,integration with messaging
networks and wireless devices such as PDAs and mobile
phones,Geodesic could very well turn this product into
a goldmine. |
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| Th
ebiggest stumbling block for e-commerce in India for
e-commerce in India today is the lack of personalization
which users demant.Here also, an IM solution could provide
the answer.Adds Geodesic's director Prashant Mulekar,
"IF you go to a site and like a product, you would obviously
want to know more about it.And what better way to explain
to a customer is queries than an instant messenger.
The missing link in e-commerce sites can thus be addressed
with the help of instant messaging tools."The Mundu
IM environment ensures queuing,transferring, escalation
and auditing of partner, agent, employee, and customer
interactions for time-sensitive communication for key
industries.Kulkarni predicts that the product would
be a great hit when deployed in banking applications.
A bank could have an instant messenger operational and
have queires answered instantly, cutting down on the
time spent by customers over phone calls and at the
bank itself.For banks and financial institutions worried
about security issues, the Mundu IM offers SSL-based
128-bit encryption for authentication and messaging.
|
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| Geodesic
is also waiting cautiously for the expected Internet
telephony and Voice-over-IP boom in April 2002. As the
product supports voice communications using LTP (lightweght
telephony protocol) over the network for users, there
can be significant cost saving for corporates. Going
forward, as Ritu Soni, project manager, says: "Users
will evolve from using multiple applications on various
devices to one unified application across all devices."
|
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| Thus
far, the only missing link in the strategy of Geodesic
has been on the branding front.The technology is great
and there is now doubt that the company has with it
a killer app-yet there are not too many who know that
Geodesic is the "brain" behind the Indiatimes instant
messaging success. The company has now realized this
and plans to get more aggressive on the brand-building
front. The Company is already talking to a few top-notch
corporations, both globally as well as in India for
the tie ups. Geodesic has also set up a marketing office
in US to market the products.Like with most hot startups,
the technoloty is not in doubt - but whether Geodesic
will be able to capitalize on that technology a la Mirabilis
(the developers of ICQ) only time will tell. |
|
 Headlines
: |
|
 SME success story |
|
|
| The
biggest IM provider you never heard of |
| Girvan
Institute Places Order With Geodesic For Instant Messaging
Platform |
|
| IM
tools are latest tech toys for corporate users |
|
| Geodesic
shows the way for startups |
|
| Geodesic
sees 400% spurt since listing |
|
| Geodesic
tipped |
|
| Instant
messaging buddies set to leapfrog across platforms |
|
| Mundu
wraps up problems in instant messaging |
|
| Finally!
Internet start-ups log on to logistics to push sales |
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