The Grey Revolution

And you will believe us after reading our confession. We actually did not

plan a story on the Grey Revolution. Neither can we take credit for identifying

the trend of technology entrepreneurship. Mainstream media has been writing

about it for quite some time. And it has been doing a fairly good job.

We wanted to do what we are best at. We tried to understand the

"hot" technologies that these "cool" start-ups are creating

and explain that to our readers. The companies, which are featured here (see the

next section– The Revolutionaries) will vouch for that. We kept on asking them

questions on the technology front all the time–the gap that these products and

technologies will fulfil, where in the next generation network will these

products fit in, the time of product rollout and so on. And of course, to

complete the picture, about the funding that they have received because the VCs

are supposed to be the "cooler" guys. Some shared it very clearly the

first time. Some did it along the way. Some were, till the end, a little

protective. No complaints on that.

While working on this story, we discovered that there is more to this than

entrepreneurship (what mainstream media has written a lot on) and technology

(what we wanted to write on). It is only then that we tried to dig out a little

bit on that aspect. And the result is what makes the essence of the story, The

Grey Revolution.

And it is a revolution, because it has far-reaching implications, not only

for the Indian business but also for the global technology community and India

as a nation. The word grey, of course, comes from the prime colour of the

tissues of the brain, plenty of which are burnt, trying to create these

technologies.

Presented here is what are the essential features of the Grey Revolution–the

intrinsic attributes that make a grey revolutionary what it is–a grey

revolutionary.

Creating, Not Building

All these companies are "creating" products for the next generation

public networks of North America and Europe. They are not trying to reinvent the

wheel by developing a cheaper clone of a product that is already available,

using cheaper manpower. They are innovating and through innovation, trying to

compete in the global market with the other start-ups in the valley and the big

companies who have dominated the telecom space for years.

And they are doing it right here in India. It is for quite some time that

India has been getting contract work for building small, obscure parts of

products from MNCs. The Indian engineers who work on the projects, sometimes do

not even have an idea about what they are working towards, let alone having the

sense of creating it.

It is different for a grey revolutionary. "The prime driver is the

challenge of creating a product and seeing the impact of your work in the

market", says the CEO of one such company. The engineers working in India

for these companies are involved right from the product development stage and

are an integral part of the core development team. Explains Raj Saksena, chief

technology officer and VP, international business development of EmpowerTel,

"This is what distinguishes companies like ours from the big MNCs. Our

model is not to offload the low value work to India, but to leverage on India’s

software talent by doing the development of the software part for our core VoIP

product here, whereas the lab in the Silicon Valley is working on the

semiconductor part and the system. And they work side by side". And that

holds true for all grey revolutionaries in general.

Neither Innovation, Nor Challenge– Fulfilling A Need

Innovation is fine. Many dotcoms were truly innovative. Yet, the reason why a

lot of them failed was because they were too obsessed with their ideas. Those

ideas did not originate to solve any real need, but tried to make up by

projecting a need, through as many advertisements as possible, thanks to cheap

funding. The "too innovative to digest" syndrome, as some analysts put

it.

Yes, challenge is a major driver, but then challenge is what drives all

entrepreneurs. How are the grey revolutionaries different?

These companies are born out of a sincere desire to solve a problem. In this

case, these are problems arising out of the gaps in the new technologies. There

is a complete change in the network technologies and architectures. Datacentric

networks are replacing voice centric networks. Multiple protocols are being

replaced by a single protocol–IP. Also, the standards are replacing

proprietary technologies. As Cisco puts it, it is a complete technology

disruption that is making communication services affordable, while making new

services available. However, like any technology disruption, it has created some

new gaps, which is the challenge before the service providers. All these

start-up companies have identified these problems and are trying to create

solutions for them. Like, say, quality of service is a major issue for the

operators of IP networks. Here is an Amoeba Telecom trying to make service

providers lives easier by providing a tool to measure and adjust service quality

for customers. Or an EmpowerTel that is creating a box that will make it

possible for traditional operators to smoothly migrate to IP, while protecting

investments on the legacy networks. While these examples are used for

illustrating a point, all companies that we have featured in The Revolutionaries

section are filling a gap.

Tomorrow’s Solutions

Another thing that is common to the products that all these companies are

creating is that the problems that they are trying to solve are not really today’s

problems. Maybe a few fast-paced service providers are facing them today, but

these will become a generic industry problems only tomorrow.

In other words, they are trying to find out what problems of today will

become unmanageable tomorrow, what new problems will arise based on the

direction that the technology is taking and focussing on trying to solve those

problems through the products that they are building.

Take, for example, what Ishoni is doing. There are few non-PC access devices

today and fewer still are connected to the broadband. And here is a company

trying to create a piece of a semiconductor product that will go inside the box,

which will connect multiple devices to the broadband, for whatever applications,

no one knows! But yes, it will happen. No one questions that.

The point is, it requires a tremendous amount of courage to venture into a

virgin area like that. That is what makes a company a pioneer. And all our grey

revolutionaries are pioneers in one way or the other. Some are creating totally

innovative products. Some are trying to solve the problem in a much better way,

creating some extra value for the service providers.

It is About Ownership

If you thought, ownership is about ESOPs, think again. ESOPs are taken for

granted. Why these small companies attract talent in the face of tough

competition from the MNCs and the better paymasters–is the fact that every

engineer working on a product knows exactly what he is doing. It is not just

following the brief. "Unlike the MNCs where the ideas come from the parent

companies, the centre of gravity of our decision making is here", says

Sanjay Nayak, CEO of Tejas Networks. His is a company, which is headquartered in

Bangalore. But even for the companies whose headquarters are in the US, the

decision making on the development work happens here to a great extent.

"The engineers here have the independence to take design or implementation

decisions. There is complete transparency", says Ravi Bali Bhat, India

chief of Amber Networks.

One has to see it to believe it. Explanation is very, very difficult. Tries

the India chief of one of these grey revolutionaries, "We have not only the

responsibility for building specific components that are core to the product,

but we also build a product that is targeted at a specific market segment. This

means our team clearly understands how the end user will use the product. So

instead of building the software development processes, here is a team that

understands the need for that product and has developed the product all by

itself, and even will test and deploy it". So there is complete ownership.

This helps people to move up in the value chain.

And this is not just the technology value chain. "Why India has not

moved up the value chain is because the employees are not encouraged to be

entrepreneurial. Unless there is entrepreneurship, we cannot be the leaders. We

will continue to remain followers", believes Raj Saksena of EmpowerTel.

But doesn’t that mean they will leave to start out on their own? If you did

not believe in all these "philosophies" so far, try out this

no-nonsense talk. "I will send them away. They have to move. I will finance

them to start their own companies. Only then can we move up", says Saksena.

Hard to digest, but that is what the grey revolution is all about.

Successful Indians Not Just Role Models

Gone are the days when successful Indians abroad were role models for Indian

companies. Now, they are all directly involved. Prakash Bhalerao promoted Alopa

Networks, Amber Networks and Ishoni Networks. Raj Saksena and Ajit Medhekar

promoted EmpowerTel. Suresh Rangachar heads Mantra. Even Tejas Networks, based

in Bangalore, owes its origin to an active role played by Dr Gururaj Deshpande.

What drives these Indians to come to India and invest? It is a mix of

leveraging on Indian talent, patriotism and getting a lot of people. "But

the major driver", says Saksena, "is to get the satisfaction of

creating the organisat-ions that will be tomorrow’s leaders, not followers of

technology". Anyone would like to see that happening in one’s own

country.

It is Carrier Class

It is not just a market segment. This phrase, "carrier class"

envelops a lot of attributes. It stands for reliability, fault-tolerance,

scalable–all the things that are the autonyms of amateurishness.

A carrier network manager is very different from an enterprise network

manager. He will put reliability on one side and all the innovative features and

flexibility on the other. If you do not match the reliability, all those

features do not mean anything to him.

The carrier class products are not scaled up versions of the enterprise

products. They are different. And for the start-ups, with fresh college guys

building those products, it is a tough challenge. What sets the grey

revolutionaries apart is that they are actually doing it. Many of these products–EmpowerTel’s,

Applion’s and Amber’s, are actually being tested or used by the carriers.

But is it so difficult? Listen to this piece from Sanjay Singh, COO,

Baypackest Technologies, "We took less time to create the product. More

time to actually make it carrier class". That sums up everything.

As these companies move up even higher in the value chain, India’s position

as a technology leader will be unchallenged. The next set of challenges is to

create world class managers to manage these companies. And play an active role

in standard making.

Yes, these are tomorrow’s problem. But if we have to avoid it, we have to

think of the solution today. Like the Grey Revolutionaries.

Shyamanuja Das