Cashing in on the tier-two city advantage

Tier II cities in the country are gaining prominence by playing a part in the development of IT in India. Cities such as Tiruchirapalli, Mangalore are being talked about in the same breadth as the biggies.

Genovate Solutions that offers training modules and IT solutions in addition to product development expertise is slowly gaining a strong foothold in India.

Anton Ravindran, Group CEO and co-founder spoke to Prasad Ramasubramanianof Cybermedia News on the route taken by the company in Indian market and main thrust areas.

You have set up operations in second string cities. What was the rationale behind this?

There are several reasons actually. Firstly, we are in Bangalore, Pune and Chennai and we have presence in major metros.

A location like Trichy may not appear as a commercial place like Chennai but it’s the second or third largest city and has nearly 25 colleges in it. It is certainly an academic hub with institutions such as St. Josephs, NIT Trichy, and we are particularly interested in looking at NITs (National Institute of Technology) which is one of our focuses.

We are not expecting Trichy to perform in the way Hyderabad does, but then again we are already there and we are convinced that there are opportunities there.

In addition to that, as global sourcing becoming an issue, Chennai is already getting expensive. So Trichy is an ideal place in terms of market potential.

Mangalore has a high potential and we have an office in Manipal. With Mangalore’s port, the economic vicinity is expected to grow and it’s a small investment relatively. Same is the case in Baroda.

In the retail domain, whom are you targeting primarily?

In this region we have done work in Bangladesh and in Sri Lanka. In Bangladesh we gave an ERP solution system, from the front end to the back end and it is a specialized software.

In India, the target would be the mid-market segment. Also, our main focus is on India and we

How do you go about the entire training module?

In India we have two separate legal entities to start off with. One is Genovate and the other RapidStart, which is completely different and legal entity.

We have been extremely successful in India with SAP and we operate from 10 to 11 cities; but the margins that we offer are all that come from SAP ERP.

We train approx this fiscal year about 1500. We remain the largest SAP training in Asia and even in India we are one of the largest in terms of SAP training center and that’s what we do.

There is a huge demand for SAP consultants. Now, RapidStart is the other company and we just signed up with Adobe for pan India and we are starting with five to seven cities straight away offering all the Adobe programs.

That’s the main development and we have no restriction on which city we operate, as it is a pan India initiative.

In India, we have a significant presence and we have been growing at probably in the neighborhood of 60-70 per cent year-on-year and I sincerely think that we have only done a very small part of the existing business.

Why a separate entity in the first place?

First, Genovate is a known brand for SAP training in India and we don’t want to change focus or dilute the brand name.

Second and most importantly, we want to make sure that we don’t cannibalize it and it would be conflict of interests and SAP and Oracle pretty much operate in the same space.

In order to avoid the clash, it’s better to have two separate interests. They both operate in a competitive market and in an independent manner that have no bias to one another. They have a separate mandate, special channels and that’s the only reason.

How do you help students chose the right choice?

When students come to us, they first go to independent legal entities. They go to Genovate and would talk to SAP staff and when they go there, they would have to be sure that they are there to talk of SAP.

When they go to RapidStart, they know the products that it offers. We are clear what the product is and what value it offers but we are not there to pick and choose.

But, we don’t sell how bad the other product is but we sell how good the technology and how it would help you. We bring the value of the product that we have and to answer your question, SAP guy would talk about his product and the other guy would talk of his.

How do you go about your loan services etc for courses that run into lakhs of rupees?

First of all, we don’t offer any discounts. We offer only what is the early bird offers and you get about 10 per cent off if you register early and that’s it. Because what we are selling is value and nothing else. In order to fund the students, we have tied up with many banks such as HDFC Bank.

If you could share the USP of Genovate vis-à-vis NIITs of the world?

Our policy is not to talk about our competitors. NIIT is a great company, they have a different product and we have a different product. We sell what we think is good. NIIT serves a different set of the market and we serve a different set of the market.