The Hindu Business Line : <I>Genesis of OPD</I>

The birth of the phrase `outsourced product development' (OPD) is an interesting experiment in strategy creation, entrepreneurship and the search for differentiation that companies go through.

First, a brief history. Aspire Systems is an entrepreneurial firm founded by a handful of people whose driving vision was to create a very successful company (the line of business did not quite matter). In the early years, the founders tried to build businesses in a wide array of areas. Each by itself was not a significant piece of business by any stretch of imagination (ranging from a few lakhs to some tens of lakhs of rupees, at the most). But it certainly kept us going in the early days. Finally, in 2000 (just as the dotcom bubble was about to burst), offshore software development became our biggest business and we gave up everything else to focus on it.

The search

Now, we had a new kind of problem to deal with! Offshore software development was already fairly well-established and as a 30-people team, we could hardly claim leadership position in this space, what with the likes of Infosys and TCS around.

So, we had to differentiate. A customer always wants to how what makes a company different from others. We kept coming up with a series of answers — none of which we were fully satisfied with.

Finally, the answer came without much fanfare and without us originally recognising its significance. We looked at our existing customer base, spotted a pattern and there it was — we knew we had a real and true differentiator. We were helping a set of product companies with their product development efforts. After a little research, we knew focusing on the product development market and differentiating around this would definitely capture customer imagination. So, we were on our merry way!

New challenge

Of course, knowing that product development is a distinct specialty and getting the world to recognise are two different things. In 2003, the market started picking up and as a small company, attracting and retaining talent was one of our challenges. Our people said, "We want to work for a branded firm."

We listened to that and it was time to enlist a PR firm to assist us in this endeavour. We spoke to the media extensively on how OPD was differen. Before we knew it, it had become a phenomenon and a well-accepted term!

Forrester, NASSCOM and several others have recognised its potential and are tracking it as an independent activity with significant future growth possibilities.

For a while, when it was becoming popular, our tag-line read "The Outsourced Product Development Company." Now we have switched to "Transforming Product Development." Welcome and long-live OPD!

(The author is CEO, Aspire Systems.)

StoriesRetold@gmail.com

Gowri Shankar Subramanian

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