Founded in 1998, NetMagic Solutions specialises in
The company has been able to attract foreign investment to the tune of Rs. 80 crores ($20mn) and has a massive Rs.100 crore expansion plan on the anvil.
The company is also aggressively looking out for new acquisitions in the next six to eight months.
Sharad Sanghi, CEO & MD, NetMagic, in an interaction with Idhries Ahmad of CIOL, explains why NetMagic Solutions hasn’t been affected by weakening dollar and shares insight into the company funding, expansion and acquisition plans.
Sharad is an industry veteran and has been involved in setting up Internet backbones and provisioning Internet services in the industry from 1990.
Sharad also talks about the latest trends in outsourcing managed services and company’s mandate to Go Green.
CIOL: Brief us about the recent $20mn investment that NetMagic has been able to pocket. How does NetMagic envision using these funds in line with company’s expansion plans?
Sharad Sanghi: This $20 million of funding to NetMagic was done by Fidelity International and Nexus India Capital.
We plan to set up four new data centers in Mumbai,
We are also looking at Remote Infrastructure Management in US. In case of US we will be just managing customers not host them. The hosting will be done out of other data centers.
CIOL: Is Netmagic looking at another series of funding in the coming quarter?
Sharad: No immediate plans for additional funding for two quarters.
CIOL: Does expanding footprint also entail acquisitions. Will we see NetMagic acquiring some companies in the near future?
Sharad: At NetMagic we look at inclusive organic growth strategy, however if a good company that augments our skill set, provides healthy customer base, comes along, we are not averse to acquire that. We will be open to companies associated with managed services space like application management or security management.
However our focus has been providing quality 24x7 services to manage data centers for businesses and to reduce their data center operations costs and free up their internal resources.
We believe as long as we are able to help enterprise maintain 100% business continuity, we will be able to garner revues. Market uncertainties tend to cancel out.
CIOL: Will funding for IT services companies take a hit because of the impending recession in US economies?
Sharad: Funding plans of companies that depend on US markets for revenues will definitely get impacted. However, companies with focus on Indian markets and appropriate business models won't have problems raising funds although valuations can take a hit based on overall sentiments.
CIOL: Outsourcing of key business processes like managing data centers didn’t get much traction in the beginning. How do you see enterprises waking up to the thought of having their data centers and security managed by other companies?
Companies now see benefits in outsourcing their data center management and other processes.
This is because fast growing enterprises are finding it difficult to manage properly the data centers resulting in down time, loss of revenue that affects business continuity.
Then again, the burgeoning costs related to data centers to power, cooling and security issues are pushing enterprises to outsource their data center requirements.
Outsourcing data center management has become essential for businesses needing to reduce overhead, increase operational efficiencies and gain a competitive edge.
NetMagic is capitalizing on this opportunity and helping availability and security of business data around the clock.
CIOL: NetMagic brands itself as a carrier- neutral managed IT services provider. How does one define carrier- neutral managed IT services provider and how has it helped company garner more market share if compared to competitors?
He is not saddled with a service provider simply because the data centre cannot allow him to terminate any other fibre to their network.
We had a customer who used both BSNL network as well as Reliance network. Now mater who is the network service providers we provide services irrespective of the service provider. Enterprises not to be locked with a particular network provider and hence can reduce costs.
CIOL: Green Data centers are is the most talked about these days. How does NetMagic look at the whole concept of the Greening data centers?
Sharad It is a very important issue for NetMagic. It is not only a CSR thing but at NetMagic we are seriously concerned about the issue. Energy efficiency is right top on our radar. We have adopted green technologies for our data centers and there is strong mandate for green data centers at NetMagic.
Netmagic is also investing big amount on research and development to make data centers green, well powered, designed and with better cooling technologies.
CIOL: What have been the major highlights for NetMagic in the last 2 quarters, viz customer acquisition, revenue, net profits; geographical break up will be useful
Sharad: Last two quarters were very important for NetMagic. We acquired top-end large enterprise customers in telecom, banking and online portal sectors. Mumbai data center was fully booked in this period with expansion in new facility completed to a large extent.