Talisma to go public to raise funds  

Priya Padmanabhan






BANGALORE: Customer Relationship Management software vendor Talisma Corporation
plans to go public late this year or early 2007, to fund its inorganic growth.

Dan Vetras, the company's president and CEO, said that the company would go

public on an exchange like the Bombay Stock Exchange, London (AIM) market or on

the Toronto Stock Exchange.






He ruled out the NASDAQ option since Talisma's current revenues of $30 million
would not make it eligible for a NASDAQ listing which is limited to companies

with revenues of $60 million and above.






Vetras said that the company intends to acquire companies in the Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP) area or Customer Interaction Management (CIM) companies

based in North America or Europe.






“We are interested in deals in the $5-$10 million category that can provide us
with technologies like VoIP or provide us with market share in a particular

geography,” said Vetras.






Talisma, which is gunning for revenues of over $30 million this year, hopes to
expand its presence in new markets like Europe, China, Middle East, Hong Kong,

Australia, Japan and New Zealand. Vetras is pleased at the way the KnowledgeBase

acquisition has helped the company strengthen its Customer Interaction

Management offerings.






“Our CRM-CIM revenue split is around 50:50 right now. We plan to increase the
CIM share further over the next couple of years,” he said. Vetras claims to

have created the CIM product category and being more successful in the space

compared to others. CIM enables contact centers, customer service, sales and

marketing enterprises to provide support through multiple channels like

Self-service, e-mail, chat, VoIP and phone. Talisma plans to offer SMS as an

additional channel this year. The company's competitors in the CIM space

include Kana, eGain, LivePerson and RightNow.






Talisma attained 68 new customers in the fiscal quarter ending March 31, 2006
and has over 700 customers globally.