Tuesday morning I got a call from Mr. Kalyan. He told me he wanted to interview an industry expert for some market research they were doing. Though I didn’t take it much seriously at first but, I still confirmed an appointment for a phone interview at around 1 pm. Meanwhile, my mind was flooded with random thoughts like – Is it as a fluke? and Would this guy actually interview me? And etc. etc.

My thought process came to a rest when I got the second call from him. He presented a questionnaire to me to which I was supposed to answer based on my experience in the industry. The discussion was about the importance of telecommunication Software/Hardware in the IT & ITES industry. He also enquired about the corporates in the field and the new verticals getting associated with it.

Here’s a summary of the entire episode -

Quest: Where is the Telecommunication Industry heading?
Me: The industry is moving towards feature-rich IP-PBX soft or hardware boxes. As opposed to the previous inclination towards traditional systems, today no company wants to run their business on what is available in the market but how it can support their business processes.

Quest: What do you feel about the market growth for Software Solutions in this domain?
Me: Having been in the field directly for a few years now, I have seen a tremendous growth in as well as acceptance of the industry towards software solutions. The ability of a software-based solution to mould to any kind of requirement is commendable. Especially with the SOA approach, the technology provider is able to deliver a host of features unlike boxed solutions.

Quest: Who all are the big players in the industry?
Me: In our industry, the most experienced players are Avaya, Aspect, Nortel, and Alcatel Lucent etc. However, the market share remains a questioned territory since the domestic market acceptance of their solutions is affected by the following take-aways associated with the solution –

1.    Very expensive products
2.    Sold only in tier 1 Corporates or call centers
3.    Very limited market ex: 24X7, Accenture, ACD, WNS HTMT, Minacs Etc. (affordability issues)

The current scenario calls for an Opex model. All leading BPOs are evaluating best solutions that can fulfill an Opex requirement. Here the Big Daddies fail to deliver and make a path for vendors like us. Drishti becomes a perfect fit here with a feature-rich solution that is both flexible and affordable. Our robust technology platform can support both capex as well as Opex deployments with equal panache and that takes us ahead of the big names I mentioned previously.

Quest: What is their individual Market share?
Me:  These American brands approximately hold 10-15%, PBX People hold 25% and the space where we and solutions like ours operate is somewhere around 20 %. The rest goes to unmanaged Market. This is close to 40% where 5-25/30 seater call centers operate, and they use VICIdial solution or freeware like Asterisk. Actually, we cannot really have an idea of market share in this unmanaged segment and these are just approximate values.

Quest: Do you think you can sell and compete with the Tier 1 Industry Players?
Me:  Yes, we have already won against the top players in past and continue to do so. Some of our victories here include our prime customers and reputed organizations like MOSL, Book my Show, E4E, Kochar, Teamlease etc. where we were in direct competition with at least one of the Tier 1 players and Drishti came out victorious with a very satisfied customer base.

Quest: What are your new venture areas and which verticals are you focusing at?
Me:  We are focusing on outsourced Call centers (tier 2 and 1) and enterprises for captive call centers. The industry verticals where we can position our solutions also include HR, BFSI, Healthcare, Education and Entertainment. Some of our diverse industry deployments include Teamlease as HR, WLC on Education, Book my Show on Entertainment, Rural Shores on Rural BPO etc.

This was my interview part. During the conversation, I actually felt like an industry expert giving out interviews professionally. As the episode ended, I came to realize what had actually happened and then began a new excitement within me – an excitement to share the experience with my team. And so I Did. So, here I am on suggestion of Drishti Marketing Team writing a blog entry about my interview.
Cheers!!