Customers drive InfoAxon to newer challenges

In 2001, when two young technology entrepreneurs wanted to start a company that provided Open Source solutions, it was an extremely tough decision, especially since Open Source faced hostility from enterprise on a large scale. They had the uphill task of building trust in a world hostile to OS. Taking the safer way out, they started with primarily   Microsoft and Java technologies. There was no specific technology focus but very soon the two young co-founders of InfoAxon technologies  realized that there was no choice, their  domain belong to Open Source technologies and then they started the difficult  but exciting job  of working on commercial Open Source technologies.

Tasting success over the years, InfoAxon adopted mainly commercial Open Source and Open Source as its main platform for development. “We had to do lot of explaining initially on the development model, what is Open Source, what it can do for your business, what kind of solutions are available, why we are unique in that particular area. There was a lot of education of the whole model required. “   reminiscences one of the entrepreneurs, Shubham Nagar. “Now it has completely changed and everybody understands what Open Source model is, impact and benefits of the technology. Especially in last 6-7 years things have changed tremendously,” and InfoAxon is on the path to huge success. 

Today, the technology has sparked a renewed interest among the CIOs, with its sustainable advantages   in terms of cost and innovation friendly applications. InfoAxon sees it as a second wave of Open Source, which is more mature, and people are now talking huge initiatives with this technology.

 In conversation with Vineet Dahiya and  Shubham Nagar,   successful Co-founders and Directors of InfoAxon technologies, India’s first Open Source Integration company:

1. What milestones have you achieved in this journey?

Shubham Nagar: Our initial projects were with some large telecom organizations to build products using Open Source technology. Many of the product manufacturers were looking to not have a lock in model as well. We started working on several platforms for local housing   and telecom companies in UK. Our core competence started evolving from that point in time.

Vineet Dahiya: We started very early with some of the largest banks in India that has helped us shape the offering, the entire Open Source solutions that we provided to a business for product and initiative launches. That was one of the milestones when we started working with largest banks in India and in UK.

2. Which are the verticals you are targeting for growth?

Shubham Nagar: Particularly in the domain which we work, the verticals were not very visible initially. We were not focusing on any one particular vertical but in general, the trend was very clear that government and financial institutions were the early adopters of Open Source. They still   are, and those were the two domains where we were getting a lot of business right from the beginning.  In addition, the international development sectors were also eager to use the technology.

It was only in the last 5-6 years when we started focusing on content and Business Intelligence streams,  that we started seeing some kind of verticalisation.  However, sharp demarcations are not there even now. The differentiation is only in terms of competency areas, like employee engagement platform or knowledge development platforms. Open Source is primarily a technology oriented domain and has been adopted by lot of verticals today but   I see potential in government, financial banks, insurance, retail companies, construction, real estate, manufacturing.

Vineet Dahiya: The way the new technologies are coming together now has pushed organizations to create new age solutions in order to engage new consumers and employees. Therefore, a mash up of new kind of technologies and Open Source is a natural choice of solutions coming in now- and this is across the verticals. The potential verticals are definitely financial institutions because there is lot of innovation required there and Open Source could be a great model for adoption. Retail and manufacturing, healthcare and education are other areas where Open Source is popular.

3. How much does each vertical contribute to the total revenue of InfoAxon?

Shubham Nagar: The revenue is fairly equally divided in three or four verticals. Financial institutions and Insurance will form a sizeable chunk. I would say about 25% from financial institutions and BFSI vertical, 25% from manufacturing and retail and about 10-15% in several other verticals like construction and real estate.

4. What is the roadmap you develop to target potential verticals?

Vineet Dahiya: Earlier we used to approach lot of forward looking CIOs, especially in the financial and insurance areas who are looking for new ways of reducing cost and bringing about innovations. Now I think, having successfully delivered lot of solutions, we get lot of interest from our website, potential customers who learn about us from their peer network, as well as from our partners. Since we are a unique organization, the only pure play Open Source solution provider in the country, this works for us.   We are platinum partners with Liferay India, Gold partner with Alfresco.

Shubham Nagar: In order to understand how the business comes in you have to understand  the ecosystem in our industry.  Now that commercial Open Source organizations have also entered into India, more acceptances are available for Open Source companies in India. Since we were already working in Open Source area, our partnership model with Liferay, Pentaho, Alfresco have given us very good connections to the ecosystem. We are their channel to the market, we are providing better support to them, and in turn, our partners   pass on business opportunities to us.  So we have almost 50% coming in from our partners while the same number comes directly from Website.

5. How do these partners add value to the business and how do you gain their mind share?

Shubham Nagar: The Open Source industry is not a very large ecosystem so we are very closely knit   with our partners. We work jointly with our partners in various opportunities, we both add great value and both of us are part of the whole Open Source value proposition. Therefore, essentially, we are both contributing to each other in many ways. Partners are giving us very qualified leads, which we can work on, we are building credibility of their technologies while taking them into other areas, much more innovative areas by building platforms and solutions for them. We invest with every technology that they bring in to gain their mindshare. As a result, we have been working with various technologies for the last 6-7 years, and that record is a huge incentive for partners to invest with us.

Vineet Dahiya: We also invest in training a lot. We have partner certified training and we ensure that they are provided to resources who work on these technologies. Also, our team participates regularly in their roadshows, seminars that they organize outside and within India,  to ensure that we bring in our perspective to their ecosystem.

6. What are the newer trends you see in Open Source technology?

Shubham Nagar: First of all,  Open Source is becoming pervasive as it is almost everywhere and touching our lives in so many ways, right from the Android phone you are using to content management system. One big trend is that the Open Source is having an impact  on the whole managing content and data space. So the areas of business intelligence, content management, CRM   are much ahead in  adopting Open Source. They also have brighter set of options available for a customer who is looking for Open Source solutions.

The second is, developers today are adopting Open Source technologies to further develop platforms. Lot of CIOs and IT teams are bending towards including Open Source as a an option vis-à-vis a proprietary development platform and that trend is going to accelerate in big way.

Vineet Dahiya:  the technology and its rapid adoption is promoting lot of startups and entrepreneurship. This is because Open Source creates a level field, when if you have an idea you can really create a platform or a product using Open Source technology.  Also   new age technology is very strong today,  especially around the digital journey of an organization,  in terms of connecting people, employees and the content and knowledge ,  and deriving market analytics. These can become cost efficient areas where Open Source could provide an advantage to quickly create such kind of solutions.

7. How do you keep pace with the newer trends and what are the solutions you offer?

Shubham Nagar: One of the ways for us to look at the newer trends is actually through the prism of Open Source technologies that we use. We continuously update   new frameworks and the library used by the developers to create solutions. That gives a glimpse into the new trends that are there. We try to stick to the basic and make sure that whatever is new and available in our domain which is around commercial Open Source technologies is something that we continuously push. So it gives us a very deep understanding of what the trends are.

Vineet Dahiya: Our customers also drive us to the newer challenges that also brings out the kind of work we are going to do in the near future. For example, many of our customers have broken traditional models and they want to now engage their customers in different way. That is focusing us on innovation in terms of new technologies, new way of thinking how could we engage their customers in their offerings. Our customers also tell us lot about new things to adopt.

8. What are your core competencies?

Shubham Nagar: Our core competencies are about building platforms and solutions for our customers using commercial Open Source technologies. Primarily these are divided into managing content for a customer; we have content-based solutions in areas such as knowledge management, enterprise content management, document management, search, enterprise network portals, social network portals, employee engagement etc. There are whole series of different areas in which we provide values to our customers.

The other side is managing data, which is business intelligence where we are helping our customers building dynamic reports.

Inherently our organization is good at integrating Open Source technologies to create platforms for our customers. I think because of our long  history of using Open Source as a tool  to create solutions for our customers, our strength really lies in efficiency in the process of   identifying the  right OS  technologies, mapping them into business requirements to bring together a very useful business solution – that is where we have a unique edge.

9. What are your expansion plans?

Vineet Dahiya: The packaged solutions that we have created for our customers are driving our expansion. These are today the potential tools to become horizontal products by themselves. So one area of expansion that we are looking at is new geographies and new markets for these packaged solutions or converting them into horizontal products for our customers.

We are getting lot of customers and visibility outside India also, so we are trying to set up partnerships in various locations like Africa, US and the Middle East. We have to ramp up our sales force so that we have dedicated teams to address different areas in Maharashtra and North India. We are also looking at developing partnership with likeminded organizations working on Open Source technologies.

          10. Where is the growth coming from? What is your Go to market strategy?

Shubham Nagar: The growth is coming from overseas market and larger customers in India adopting our platforms and solutions, aptly supported by us. Many customers outside India are looking for niche solutions providers form India to implement their solutions that is another area of growth for us.

Vineet Dahiya: GTM is primarily   through our partners while sharing lot of leads and market intelligence with them. Second is we try to engage our customers through social media like LinkedIn, e-mailers etc. We also reach out through technology related events where we participate either as a speaker or as one of the sponsors.