Sanjaya Sharma in many ways can be termed as the man who created the
e-learning ecosystem in India. In 1990, when the Internet and computers were not
that popular in India, Sharma saw an opportunity in combining education and IT.
He envisaged a future where education would be provided in imaginative ways
using the latest technology on offer. Sharma established his company, backed by
the renowned corporate house of Tatas. The company was christened Tata
Interactive Systems (TIS).
In the last 16 years or so, the company has seen many ups and fewer downs. It
has grown impressively and has close to 900 employees. TIS is headquartered in
Mumbai and has a development center in Kolkata. It has it sales team spread
across different part of the globe. Of late, the market has been rife with
rumors about TIS. In a tête-à -tête with Shashwat Chaturvedi from
CyberMedia News, Sanjay Sharma, CEO, TIS, provides insight as to how the
company functions and in the process lays to rest a lot of doubts. Excerpts.
It has been rumored that TIS will be merged with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
What is your take on it?
I am myself unaware of it. Anyways, what big difference would it (merger)
make? TIS is a division of Tata Industries and so is TCS. In fact, we are
working on close to half-a-dozen projects jointly. When it comes to external
projects, we present a unified Tata front to the clients. S. Ramadorai (CEO, TCS)
is one of the reviewers of TIS. There is no immediate talk of such a move, and I
will be very surprised if it happens in 2006.
Recently, the internal structure of the company was reorganized, what
necessitated such a radical restructure that had been in place for quite a few
years?
Future growth and present expansion necessitated such a move. We had followed
the line of business (LOB) approach for years, but it was certainly not the best
of the way to do business. For instance, in one of the LOBs, one senior manager
was looking over close to 400 people. We brainstormed for quite some time and
came up with the idea of practices. The new system is completely attuned to the
way the e-learning industry is evolving. For instance, now we have ten
practices, with one manager in charge of each. The practices have people that
have special skills or knowledge specific to it. Like enterprise application
training (EAT) will have people who have worked in the space earlier. Business
reviews are carried every month for each practice. It has been 4-5 months since
the restructuring and I have all the reasons to believe that it has worked for
us.
Has TIS missed the annual targets this year?
Yes, for the first time in 16 years, we indeed missed the targets. A single
big order that was supposed to come in the month of December did not turn up,
skewing up all the targets.
It is rumored that TIS is facing a lot of pressure now on its pricing from
other e-learning players in India?
It has been so for quite many years. Many small e-learning companies often
undercut each other to gain projects. But, TIS has been largely away from all
this. The clients that choose us do so for the quality work that we do, in the
last few years our average price has appreciated and not gone down. Clients
recognize that we stand for quality, we have recently been awarded four
international prizes for our work. Clients appreciate the kind of investment we
have made in the facility and the overheads. Customers that are anyways looking
for lower prices will always find vendors that offer them.
TIS also supposedly lost quite a few prestigious projects in the recent past?
It is part of a business. Yet, most of my clients are repeat customers, we
have clients like McGraw-Hill, Netg, British Airways, HSBC, Siemens, etc. I am
already sitting on a 50 per cent order backlog for the current year.
Why is that a lot of people are quitting TIS, and joining other competitors?
The attrition is normal. Every month close to 20 people quit the company. The
big difference right now is that we have stopped hiring. We had ramped up our
numbers for a specific project that we going to get. Since the project did not
materialize, we were overstaffed. We were over 900 people; the ideal number
should be around 800. Once the correction has taken place, we hope to start
recruiting people again in October (2006). As far as people joining competition
is concerned, there is also a lot of reverse flow happening. E-learning industry
in India is still very fluid, so this kind of to-and-fro movement is pretty
commonplace.
The recent SAP implementation, running into a few crores, has reportedly not
worked according to the company's liking?
It is certainly not true. With the use of SAP, we have aligned all our global
offices on a single system. We have over 300 people who are working abroad. We
have offices in different continents of America, Europe, Middle East,
Asia-Pacific. There are at any given moment close to 200 projects that the
company is working on. Keeping in mind all these complexities, the
implementation of SAP ERP has helped us no end. Now, all the orders can be
logged, tracked at a click of a button.
The Kolkata development center is reportedly not showing returns as it was
supposed too, your comments?
Again, it is untrue. In fact the Kolkatta center has been more profitable
than our Mumbai center. The capacity for Kolkata is 250, and it is running full
house. That is proof enough that the center is working well for TIS. It has been
over a year since the center was opened. Two out of the 10 practices are being
handled from Kolkata center.
TIS became the first Indian e-learning company to acquire companies abroad,
how has the M&A helped?
We acquired Tertia Edusoft AG in Switzerland and Tertia Edusoft GmbH in
Germany. These are small companies that focus on specific areas; Like the German
company, which was renowned in the country for it Simulation products; Or the
Swiss company has a very unique anti money laundering product that has very good
potential across the world. We chose these companies for the specific skill sets
that they provided. These were profitable firms working in a niche market, now
they are part of a global company. It has also helped us increase our footprints
in European markets.
What lies ahead for TIS?
We are quite buoyant about the future prospects. TIS is a 16-year-old
company, and has created a brand name that is known globally. As, I said
earlier, we are on target this time. The lesson that I have learned is to limit
one's risks, so that a single project does not impact us the way it did. We
are also breaking into new markets, for instance, our STOBEL (story-based
e-learning) approach has found many takers. We will be opening an office in
South Africa shortly. We are aiming for over 30 per cent growth this year. It is
quite an exciting time to be in business.
© CyberMedia News