HEADLINES
JOBS
DISCUSS
POLICY POLICE
ARCHIVES

Aditi bets heavily on e-service product market

These bets are inspired by a Forrester's report that puts the branded e-service product market at $2.50 million by 2002.

Singh is looking at 40 per cent of the pie for 'Talisma', his global-standards product made entirely in India.

T O D A Y

• Govt's venture cap fund • Aditi bets on e-service • MP unveils IT policy • Paging industry

Singh has been quoted as saying that while Talisma, the e-service equivalent of a telephone call centre solution, has received rave reviews from industry and experts, these are early days for the product to break even.

E-service, or electronic customer management, is an area that has seen phenomenal growth with the boom of e-commerce as companies turn to the Internet to grow their customers.

Talisma is one of the comprehensive e-service solutions packages that effectively address this need creating, in the process, a detailed database of customer profiles for the company.

Talisma's Version 1.0 hit the streets in November. Version 2.0 targeted at larger e-businesses will be shipped later in the second quarter.

The first version addresses smaller organisations with a 2-10 e-service staff requirement. The second version offers virtually unlimited user facility by utilising the Web.

However, products don't spell spin-offs like services do in the software business. That is why Aditi is looking for venture capital funding to fuel R&D and sales and marketing that could need up to $5 million this year to get Talisma up and running.

So far, most of the profit, roughly 20 per cent after tax on revenues around $9.1 million for the siblings Aditi Corp and Aditi Technologies combined, has been pumped back into Talisma and the bottom line isn't exactly black.

However, with services currently accounting for most of the revenue, and the prospects of fresh investments from private venture capitalists or institutions, Singh is betting on Talisma which he hopes will break even and start returning positive cash flows in about two to three years.

Based in the US at the Aditi Corp headquarters, chief fund-raiser Singh, as he now sees himself, says he has not decided yet on the extent of venture capital funding the company is looking at but it could be anywhere between $5-10 million.

Cagey on the valuation of the roughly $4 million equity capital, he says, he is open to trading in around 20 per cent of the stock for the money. He is also tight-lipped on who the buyers might be.

Earlier:

Getting there...
Aditi's 'Talisma' has become first Indian product to be put up on Microsoft's SBN site.

- Compiled from the Indian media

Tell us what you think