G7 CR Aims to be World’s #1 Cloud Managed Service Provider

Dr. Christopher Richard, MD & Chief Cloud Architect, G7 CR Technologies India explains the unprecedented growth for cloud computing in pandemic and how cloud based solutions and services have grown in the last few months.

What are the solutions and services in the G7 CR Technologies portfolio?

G7 CR Technologies is a cloud-focused company. Our entire business is focused on the cloud and we are very strong in the SMB front. We are 4 years old in the cloud space and today we do close to around $25 million business in the cloud industry. We are an expert Azure Managed Services Partner, driving the cloud transformation for over 800+ businesses pan India.

G7 CR provides cloud hosting services on Microsoft Azure, packaged with all the related support services for free. These services include managing cloud servers, monitoring cloud deployments, cloud architectural designs, cloud security services, governance services, 24×7 telephonic support and implementing advance technologies like power BI, analysis services, artificial intelligence, bots and machine learning. We have been recently recognized as the Microsoft Country partner of the year 2020. This is the second year in a row that G7 CR has received this recognition from Microsoft.

What is the GTM strategy you follow in the Indian market?

Our go-to-market strategy has always been a very disruptive one. At the core of this disruption is a deep understanding that we have a set of very intelligent customers who already know a lot. So, putting a person in front of the customer who is purely into sales is a sure to end in failure. As a strategy, therefore, our architects are in the front-line during such discussions. What the customer is looking for is confidence in our technological abilities to be able to take him to the cloud, keep him safe there and ensure that his resources are up and running – as is expected on the cloud.

Our primary GTM has been architect facing. We were never sales, but solutions focused always. This has helped in building the trust and confidence that we have acquired. We also realise that one of the GTM strategy that has worked phenomenally in our favour is not giving a sales target to any of the solution architects engaging with the customers. We give them a value target instead. Apart from trust, this creates transparency between the customers, our partners and the cloud providers.

Which are the verticals you witness maximum traction?

In the current situation, we have seen maximum traction from the services, FMCG and startups. In terms of customer count, SMB space has seen a good traction, but the revenues still remain small.

Who are your marquee customers and what are their use cases?

We have customers from across verticals like telecom, SMEs, Start-ups, retail, health care and other. They have already been reaping in the benefits of cloud adaption even prior to covid-19 lockdown. Some of our top customer use cases have been in the B2B segment, with start-ups and the great invocation they bring to the table. We do work with India’s leading B2B platforms and unicorns. We are working with startups with some of their KYC solutions. Currently we have whole momentum going on to move core banking to the cloud for some of the co-operative banks in the country.

What has been the business and economic impact of COVID19 pandemic on your business?

There has been definitely an unprecedented growth in cloud computing business, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and it is an obvious reaction to the situation. Businesses are now ready to accept and try things away from traditional ones. The companies that had their servers on-prem, landed up spending more ensuring their key people were able to reach these servers while they worked from home. This growth has seen crunch on resources at many cloud providers DCs and the good news is we now see a huge number of organizations opening up conversations on using cloud.

What are the initiatives you have taken up for your employees?

We announced a work from home allowance of Rs 18,000 for all our employees. The intent is to aid the purchase of UPS and office furniture for our employees so that they can work comfortably from the safety of their home. We also got comfortable office chairs delivered from the office to each employee’s residence and we are also reimbursing monthly internet bills. In addition, the company has also announced benefits of Rs 1 lakh as hospitalization expenses for COVID related treatment. This amount will be over and above their insurance cover and can be availed by the employees and their immediate family members (spouse, children, parents and siblings under the age of 18 years).

What are the measures undertaken to support and service existing clients?

In terms of technology and business, customers are facing multiple challenges in these difficult times. Some of the tech challenges that have been observed are the lack of skilled resources to be able to so quickly have an unplanned tech transformation. Fall in cash inflows and the great dilemma of whether to spend or reduce spending on tech and people. We have stepped in with scaled up our teams to ensure we fill these gaps for our customers, and they can now work with our teams like an extended team of their own for the tech transformation.

We have ensured that we charge zero fees for these tech transformation assignments and for us, this is also a mix of a business and Social cause. Social cause as the free services does not put a stress on business budgets during these trying times, and business cause because it is a fact that for us to survive, all businesses need to survive as well. We have also supported some customers from the COVID-19 impacted industries with either a zero-margin rate or an extended credit period.

How are you prioritizing between retaining existing clients and acquiring new clients?

For us, loosing existing customers is more painful than losing a new opportunity, because if a customer leaves us after experiencing our services, it means we are doing something wrong. Fortunately for us we have had less than .004% churn rate so far. We always believe in giving the best to customers who have put their trust in us. Our entire leadership focus has been on ensuring maximum support to these customers on all fronts during these testing economic times.

What are going to be your key focus areas for the next 12-18 months?

We plan to continue to grow at 100% year on year and more. We are also looking at global expansion. We have already got our UAE office setup, just waiting for the travel to open up so that we can basically have people heading the operations there and we are pretty serious on these plans. We are also exploring Canada as our North America destination and we already got our setup in UK and soon should be able to start our operations there. Again, we are waiting for the travel to open up. Hence, we aspire in the next 12-18 months to expand in various countries and be world’s number one cloud managed service provider.