The Hindu Business Line : Xora scouts for network carriers

Xora Inc, a US-based mobile workforce solutions company, is scouting for Indian network carriers to offer its software product that enables tracking of employees.

Xora's software uses a combination of mobile phone, global positioning system (GPS) and e-mail. It has been demonstrated in the US for several corporates and Government organisations.

Mr Ananth Rani, Vice-President (Products and Services), who is currently in India, has initiated discussions with prospective Indian carriers and clients in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi.

It would be an effective tool to track both mobile workers and vehicles.

For instance, skilled employees like plumbers, electrical workers or medical representatives of large companies or sales staff on the move can be precisely tracked.

This gives options for the management to deploy them efficiently for client servicing.

The entire exercise has two major benefits - time and energy saving for the employee, who can attend to multiple client visits or jobs.

For managements it can mean cost cutting and better management of mobile staff. To ensure privacy, the tracking mechanism can be switched off during non-official working hours, he said.

Xora, founded in 1999 by a group of ex-Oracle (thus Xora) professionals, has a customer support and engineering centre in Bangalore with about 90 staff. "We plan to expand the staff strength as well as make some investments to increase our operations by March 2007," Mr Ananth Rani told Business Line.

The company is targeting SMEs. In the US it collaborates with sales representatives of Sprint, which has a subscriber strength of 70,000 on its network.

The Xora software runs on mobile phones, which are provided to the target workforce.

This enables record time sheets and job status information. For location tracking, a GPS receiver is embedded in the mobile phone. Finally, the mobile will have a real-time access to e-mail services.