India's best Product Companies

Just few days back,there was a discussion here as to why there aren't more product startups/companies in India.The two main reasons for not having more product companies in India are listed below:

1. Development of a software product requires more investment and also needs excellent marketing.The risk involved is too high(This is the most obvious reason)
2. (This was really shocking for me)To launch a software product,you need to be in a First world nation and not India.This makes me wonder,though there is a huge IT boom in India,it is still not considered an ideal destination

Business Today has given a very good analysis of "India's hottest software Product Companies" and some of the prominent products like FlexCube, Tally were the obvious contenders in the list but there were some surprises too in the list.Keep on reading.....

The list of the India's 10 prominent product companies is given below(the complete article can found in Business Today-February25,2007):

1. 3i Infotech:
Revenues: Rs 445.1 cr
Flagship Product: Kastle-A universal banking product that covers origination, srvicing and collection of funds
Facts: As per a survey by Dataquest, 3i has become the forth largest player in the Indian products market.What helped 3i is acquisition of small firms like DataCons, FDG and Stet,half of 3i's revenues comes from Products!!!

2. Infosys Technologies:
Revenues: Rs 391 cr(4.83% of Infosys's revenues)
Flagship Product: Finacle- A universal banking solution
Facts: In the year 2006, Finacle fetched $81.86 million in revenues.As per Merwin Fernandes(VP-Global Head,Sales & Marketing), "Finacle is growing faster than products like FlexCube and Temenos,but at a smaller base"

3. IBS Software:
Revenues: Rs 225 cr
Flagship Product: aIRES-Passenger reservation and inventory management system.
Facts: After 9/11, IBS decided to improve its domain expertise in travel and tourism industry by building three software products- aIRES, iCargo and iLogistics.

4. Ittiam:
Revenues: Rs 36 cr
Flagship Product: DSP(Digital Signal Procssing) solutions for portable media players
Facts: The company name Ittiam is inspired by a one liner philosophy "I think therefore I am".For third year in a row,Ittiam has been voted as world's most preferred provider of DSP based IP in a survey of DSP professionals.

5. Ramco Systems:
Revenues: Rs 194 cr
Flagship Product: Enterprise Series-ERP package targetted at primarily small businesses
Facts: Ramco has never tried to compete with the bigger players like SAP , Oracle in the ERP market but has always focussed on smaller companies and domestic markets for its expansion.As per the COO of Ramco Systems,"Cost is not the only reason why customers come to Ramco but Ramco also provides an excellent software application that not only addresses functional requirements but also enhance IT capability of the customers"

6. Sasken Communication Technologies:
Revenues: Rs 339.69 cr
Flagship Product: NA - Solutions in millions of cellphones used globally
Facts: Sasken was founded by Rajiv Mody in 1989 in a garage in San Jose , California as "Silicon Automation Systems" and later moved to Gujarat as ASIC Technologies and than to Bangalore as "Sasken".Its modem software is into 55 million handsets globally and its application suite is installed in more than 8 million smart phones

7. Subex Azure:
Revenues: Rs 172 cr
Flagship Product: RocWare - Operational efficiency and service agility software suite
Facts: In seven years(since 1999), Subex is made seven acquisitions worth $323.5 million!!!With the acquisition of Canadian company,Syndesis(for $164.5 million) Subex's products have expanded from telecom fraud management(Ranger) and billing solutions(Concilia) to revenue enhancing solutions(Moneta and Optima)

8. Tally Solutions:
Revenues: Rs 120 cr
Flagship Product: Tally 9.0 accounting package
Facts: Tally has 90% market share in the domestic market for accounting software .Tally claims to have 2 million users in 92 countries.Now,Tally is looking at ERP solutions for small businesses and another one in the retail industry.

9. Talisma:
Revenues: NA
Flagship Product: Talisma CIM-Multi Channel customer interaction management solution
Facts: Even though, Talisma is in competition with the stronger players like SAP, Siebel etc in the CRM and CIM market ,it has around 800 customers worldwide and also expects to add 50+ customers(big and small) every quarter.For its progress,Talisma believes in word of the mouth marketing and on Search Engine based marketing.

10. Tejas Networks:
Revenues: Rs 250 cr
Flagship Product: Optical networking products
Facts: It as co-founded by Sanjay Nayak along with Gururaj Desh Deshpande of Sycamore Networks.Even with bigger players like ZTE, Huawei and Cisco operating in the same domain,Tejas has around 25% market share in the segment it operates in!!!