Microland in its version 3.0 avatar

BANGALORE: Microland founder Pradeep Kar is no stranger to the IT industry. In fact, he has seen the highs and lows of his business since the inception of Microland. Considered as one of the few serial entrepreneurs from India, he is now busy charting out plan for Microland’s new version.

Kar is looking at making the most in the remote infrastructure management space. “This space is not new to us. We know networks. We use to manage networks in 1989. From the last four years, we are concentrating on this space and we are investing heavily in this space,” he states.

The company has raised over $17 million during this period, which also includes some of his personal investment. “In the last four years, we have grown to 1800 people and we are managing several thousand servers and IT infrastructure,” he says.

As a next step, the company is adding another 72,000 square feet in Bangalore, which can provide seating capacity to over 2000 people.

“I call remote infrastructure management as third wave for India. In the initial days, global companies outsourced software work to India later it moved to telecom, and services now this is the time where large enterprises in the US are looking at India,” says Kar.

Nasscom puts this as a $110 million opportunity for India.

“In the last four years we have signed over 60 customers. There are enough opportunities for the Indian IT companies. I can sense that most of the IT companies are looking at this space to enter,” he says.

“We are investing heavily in this space. Our new center, which will be operational in few days, has four data centers and six labs. Probably, this is the largest remote infrastructure management center from India. We can offer virtualization for clients. They can virtually see what is happening in this center from anywhere in the world,” says Kar.

He answers in the negative when asked whether he is looking at any new space. “I think we need to explore this space before venturing into new things. In the past, we took some bold decisions to discontinue some of the areas we were operating. But we feel this is the right time to be in this space and we are.”

Kar, however, is not looking at raising more funds for this. “We don’t need investments. We are profitable. We had raised $11 million in August 2006 from Cargill Ventures, Intel Capital, Trident Capital and JAFCO Venture. Earlier, we had raised $7.3 million from JP Morgan and ICICI Ventures.’’

(Image: Pankan)

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