Others: Company to Watchout: Rivals' Envy

Innovation takes companies to the next level. Sustained growth can be
achieved through a combination of factors such as a unique approach in customer
focus, long-term vision, competence to maintain leadership, being people centric
and cost effectiveness, etc.

Selecting some of the major companies which are really doing well is a
Herculean task. However, we are attempting to identify some of them, without
ranking the best. First, our job was to choose some of the emerging areas. Areas
like telecom products, value-added services, telecom software, WiMax, billing
solutions and telecom transmission were selected. Tejas Networks, OnMobile,
Aricent, Sasken, Tech Mahindra and Aperto were identified as "Emerging Companies
during 2006-07". What are they doing exceptionally to up their ante in the
crowded market place?

Aperto Networks

Aperto Networks India, that helps service providers deliver affordable wireless
voice and broadband profitably by building advanced WiMax base stations and
subscriber units, is one of the leaders in the WiMax industry. Bharti, VSNL,
BSNL and Aircel are its main WiMax clients.

The company is planning to have a contract manufacturing facility in India
soon. At present, Aperto Networks' products are manufactured in the US, Mexico
and Taiwan. Contract manufacturing will be done on an OEM basis as production in
India will be cost effective to support its operations in India.

Aperto Networks is also planning to double its manpower. At present, it has
thirty people at the Bangalore development center, while seven are supporting
the sales and marketing functions. The Aperto WiMax development center in
Bangalore was established last year for the purpose of accelerating engineering
development and deployment of Aperto's WiMax-forum certified and WiMax-class
products. The development center was set up in India to take advantage of the
highly skilled and cost effective technical resources.

Aricent

From a small software development division of Hughes Electronics
Corporation created 15 years ago, Aricent has grown into a 6,700-person
organization with offices worldwide. Throughout the years, it expanded by
uniting complementary companies into one organization to provide the greatest
strategic value to its clients. It is enjoying a talented team of designers,
consultants and engineers who know what it takes to solve the most complex,
high-impact challenges faced by clients-the world's leading communications
equipment manufacturers, device manufacturers and service providers. By focusing
exclusively on communications software, it provides the greatest depth and
breadth of services and products to meet our clients' needs-from strategic
design to implementation in the field.

Nine of the top ten telecommunications equipment suppliers, eight of the top
ten mobile phone manufacturers, and many of the world's major global service
providers are Aricent customers. Revenue during 2006-07 increased by 25% to Rs
1,307 crore from Rs 1,047 crore in 2005-06. The target is to achieve around $400
mn during the current fiscal. Manpower rose by 26% to 7,200 in 2006-07 from
5,700 in 2005-06, and is estimated to touch 9,700 during the current fiscal.

OnMobile

Incubated at Infosys in 2000, OnMobile has already become a market
leader in the VAS segment with more than 50% market share. To sustain the market
share, OnMobile would be focusing on the VAS market without making any
diversifications.

After trials in the initial phase of incubation, during 2002-04,
speech-driven products such as ring tones, infotainment jokes, ring back tones,
dating contests were launched. In 2005, innovativeness was at the fore and
multi-modal service offerings such as music jukebox, karaoke, reverse auction,
mCommerce, etc were introduced. Last year, the company expanded on all fronts
reaching over 120 mn telecom subscribers and directly accessing 50 mn operator
subscribers. At present, it is handling over 1.4 bn calls, and expanding in
Singapore and Australia. OnMobile, which has its presence in all the telecom
circles of India on CDMA, GSM and landline, has a number of credits. It
developed the first Indian English recognition model with Nuance in 2001; the
first Hindi and regional languages model with Nuance and in partnership with
Central Institute of Regional Languages, Mysore in 2003.

It is constantly looking at designing products that use newer capabilities
and technologies in order to excite its customers, while embracing complex
technologies that enhance consumer experience in the wireless and wired market.
OnMobile periodically revises its business models such that its technologies
appeal to a wider audience irrespective of geographies. Innovations have enabled
OnMobile to give operator's ARPU to the extent of 6-9%. Before launching a
product, OnMobile's research team analyses the technology, envisions its
potential, deliberates the various ways to tap its capabilities and, finally,
adapts the technology such that consumers benefit from the product and service
providers, and are ensured of revenue generation. In the process, OnMobile has
successfully overcome limitations such as slow network speed, complex WAP
configurations, MMS or 3G, small screen-size of mobile phones, one-language
communication, etc.

And its competence and leadership in the segment has enabled to clock a
healthy growth during the last fiscal. Revenues shot up by 85% in 2006-07 and
the target is to achieve 60-70% growth in the current fiscal. Its manpower also
grew to 650 from 300 a year ago. Manpower will touch 1,000 in the next two
years, and the growth will bring cheers to the VAS sector.

Sasken Technologies

It is an ideal example of a Silicon Valley software company, which
does wonders for the Indian entrepreneurs and global customers.

Sasken, an embedded communications solutions company that helps businesses
across the telecom value chain accelerate product development life cycles,
offers a unique combination of R&D consultancy, wireless software products and
software services. And works with network OEMs, semiconductor vendors, terminal
device OEMs and operators across the world. Thanks to innovation, global Fortune
500 and tier-1 companies in these segments are part of Sasken's customer
profile. Established in 1989, Sasken employs over 3,500 people operating from
R&D centers in Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in India; Kaustinen, Tampere, Oulu &
Turku in Finland; and Monterrey in Mexico.

In addition to being directly involved in the development of a variety of
technologies, Sasken is a member of premier technology bodies including ITU,
3GPP, GCF, MPEG-ISO, and the ATM, DSL and SDR forums. A knowledge-driven company
that values transparent business practices and provides comprehensive solutions
to help businesses achieve their goals of rapid product innovation and
profitability. Its core values revolve around passion and integrity. Under the
leadership of Rajiv C Modi, it respects the courage of personal conviction, and
actively cultivates a spirit of inquiry and individual enterprise. It dares to
explore new opportunities to find new ways to solve technical challenges. The
company grew its revenue by 55% during fiscal 2006-07 at Rs 477 crore and a net
total of 107 people were added in Q4 (gross adds of 290), taking the total
employee strength to 3,611.
 

Tech Mahindra

Committed to quality, Tech Mahindra adds value to client businesses
through well-established methodologies, tools and techniques backed by its
stringent quality processes. Over 18,000 professionals service clients across
various telecom segments, from multiple offshore development centers across
cities in India, UK and sales offices across Americas, Europe and the
Asia-Pacific.

Having serviced premium telecom companies worldwide, for nearly two decades,
Tech Mahindra combines deep domain expertise in OSS and BSS systems,
intellectual leadership and a global workforce advantage to provide services to
leading players in the telecom ecosystem. It provides a wide variety of services
ranging from IT strategy and consulting to system integration, design,
application development, implementation, maintenance and product engineering. It
has built long-term sustainable relationships with telecom customers to deliver
IT services that help them achieve significant RoI and competitive advantage in
the telecom marketplace.

Under the leadership of Nayyar, Tech Mahindra has become the third Largest
BSS System Integrator in the world, and the fifth largest overall BSS company.
For the year ending March 2007, the consolidated revenue grew by 136% to Rs
2,929 crore from Rs 1242.7 crore in the previous year. Consolidated headcount is
up by 88% at 19,749.

Tejas Networks

The Bangalore-based Tejas Networks is one of the first truly global
product companies from India in the telecommunications domain. It is leading the
development of next-generation of optical (based on SDH/SONET standards)
networking products, which have been successfully deployed in several
telecommunication networks across the globe. One of the pioneers in developing
next-gen SDH/SONET products that allow telecom carriers to integrate voice, data
and intelligent network management on a single network, Tejas is also among one
of the first companies in the world to have developed and deployed standards
compliant Ethernet-over-SDH/SONET.

By using the relatively lower-cost of, but highly talented R&D engineers in
India, Tejas has been able to make reasonable investment in R&D, resulting in
products that are technologically superior, and competitively priced as compared
to products from US/European companies. Tejas is one among a new generation of
high technology companies from India, which has demonstrated the power of
"Innovation Leverage".

Presently, Tejas has developed and deployed the third-generation of optical
transmission ("Packetized Transport") enabling carriers to build extremely
efficient converged networks for multi-play services and it is the first Indian
company to be certified by the metro Ethernet forum for meeting stringent
carrier Ethernet specifications. It has witnessed enormous success in domestic
as well as international markets. Tejas is deployed in all major telecom
networks in India. Its customer list includes BSNL, MTNL, Tata Teleservices,
Tata Power, VSNL International, Bharti Airtel, ITI, Railtel, PGCIL, GAIL, Indian
Railways and several other telecom carriers and service providers. Globally,
Tejas products are deployed in nearly 50 countries through OEM and partner
channels.

It has received enormous acceptance both in India as well as globally for its
blend of technological prowess and superior equipment support. Tejas Networks'
products today are deployed globally in nearly 50 countries through its own
reach as well as partnerships with several large OEM partners. Nearly 34,000
Tejas products have been shipped rendering 99.99% reliability to its customer
networks. In 2006-07, Tejas grew its exports by over 200% over the last fiscal.
Tejas has also seen its revenues swell. During fiscal 2006-07, revenue was up by
83% at Rs 234 crore from Rs 128 crore during fiscal 2005-06.

At present, Tejas employs over 370 persons of whom roughly 25% hold Masters
degree/PhD from prestigious institutions from India and the US. Roughly 60% of
its talent is involved in R&D and product development. Its special focus in
honing its core competence of R&D in the telecom space has given rise to several
smart practices on the business aspect. Tejas was one of the first to deploy its
standards compliant Ethernet-over-SDH solution globally and is presently among
the top market shareholders in India for its product space (next—generation SDH/SONET
optical networking equipment). It has a global reach for its products through
several tier-1 and tier-2 OEM partners, apart from a gamut of SIs, VARs and
resellers. This is perhaps one of the first occasions when an Indian product
company is exporting technology to leading global equipment vendors.

Baburajan K

baburajank@cybermedia.co.in