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Anand Parthasarathy

Bangalore Aug. 17 The Nasscom Product Conclave held here last week, saw the release of a comprehensive study by management consultants Zinnov. This provided Indian software developers an opportunity to increase their business almost ten-fold to nearly $12 billion by 2015.

While the deliberations within the conference hall were widely reported, the expo held on the sidelines, was powerful evidence of a canny new stream of opportunity that Indian technology providers were exploring, helping Indian software product developers with tools and services that would give them that vital competitive edge in the global ‘mandi’.

The Expo featured some two dozen solution providers – and here is the interesting part – the overwhelming numbers were Indian outfits, whose offerings were ‘Made in India’ – for Indian product players.

Typical of the new breed of software product ‘kickstarters’ was the Chennai-based AdventNet Development Centre India whose flagship ‘ManageEngine’ is a suite of scalable enterprise management software tools, tailored to keep a sharp eye on the corporate network.

Product Manager Mr R. Shankar, told Business Line that the company was well known to a wider family of lay users for its ‘Zoho’ suite of free office tools, which had recently been beefed up with the industry’s first online customer relations management tool, ZohoCRM. This was free for up to three users and subsequently was available for as low as $12 per user a month (see www.zohocrm.com ) – a boon for small product startups which might not be able to afford the big name CRM tools.

Based in Bangalore, Adaptive Processes Consulting ( www.adaptiveprocesses.com ) helps companies achieve and maintain that vital ISO 90001 or CMMI certification – a mark of quality that is a perquisite for doing global business. Adaptive’s Principal Consultant, Mr L.N. Mishra, explained that using proprietary tools, the company was able to offer agility and affordable services at less than Rs 19,000 a month.

Also from Bangalore, GreyTip Software ( www.greytip.com) has made human resource and pay roll solutions its chosen turf, with the mantra: “Automation will bell the cat – and get you back your true calling”! And Chennai-based, Tandem Integrated Business Solutions ( www.tibs.in) is another payroll and HR solutions provider. Their offerings are ‘pay-per-use; you don’t need to invest in your own IT, explained Mr T.E. Gautham Chief Executive Officer.

Akamai’s forte is accelerating Web applications – and its tools promise to kickstart web-based service operations, particularly those that have a software-as-a-service model in place ( www.akamai.com).

Finding information – fast – from emails, documents, minutes of meetings – and reaching it to the right person, can be a vital factor in product business, says Mr R. Sridhar, Director PointCross, ( www.pointcross.com) a provider whose flagship offering is UBIS (Unified Business Information System). The company reaches out to its customers from Bangalore as well as two offices in the US.

A rare presence from Nagpur was Excellon Software ( www.e-caliber.com ) formerly e-Caliber, a company that has carved out its space in the automotive dealership business with its solution ‘Autosol’; while another interesting offering from a Tier II centre, Udipi, was RoboTracker, a project management and tracking solution from Robosoft Technologies ( www.robosoftin.com ).

From that ‘other’ cybercity, Hyderabad, Nawa Software Labs ( www.nawasoft.com ) offered OneOffice, a tool that promised ‘CRM – and beyond’.

And back in Bangalore, Axcend Automation and Software ( www.axcend.com) a core player in the industrial automation space offered M’ManSys a tool to increase production efficiencies with a maintenance management platform. Its motto: From Pit stop to nonstop!

Managing corporate travel can be a challenge for larger companies – which is where ChannelMentor’s TravelGrid solution might be a useful tool for tightening in house travel expenses ( www.channelmentor.com).

For companies that have a great product idea – but no resources to hire costly software programming skills – AgileLabs offers Axpert, a tool kit to build any applications – CRM, ERP – without having to write code ( www.agile-labs.com).

All these were fairly small or medium sized outfits – and perhaps for that reason they seemed to know what similarly sized product developers would want. Their joint pitch was: ‘do what you do best; leave the rest to us’.

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