India's first SW tech exchange launched

DQW News Bureau


Chennai

India's first software technology exchange, eseebargain.com, a unique business-to-business portal, was launched here last night. The portal aims to provide a unique B2B platform for Indian IT service providers to reach out to global clients.

The promoters, eseebargain.com pvt ltd, is part of the Rs 1,000 crore Bannari Amman Group based in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. This is the group's first foray into the infotech arena. The group has strong base in the engineering industry with 30 odd companies manufacturing a range of goods from sugar to alcohol, leather, textile, automobile dealerships, and runs hospitals and finance companies.

This site will facilitate foreign clients to access the best talent available in India for outsourcing their software service requirements. eseebargain.com carries out an in-depth evaluation of Indian IT service providers who register with it in the unique three tier process. The final level of due diligence is an onsite verification at the vendor's premises.


KS Sundararaman, MD, eseebargain, said the site would also provide for a 'price-profile' matching system whereby the client would be able to make his final choice based on multiple parameters such as price, credibility, track record and technical capabilities.

"This is probably the only company doing such a thing in India," remarked M Anandakrishnan, IT Advisor to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, after launching the portal. He observed that big software companies are now looking at outsourcing a large part of their developmental work outside their core competencies.

Outsourcing will be more cost effective and efficient for these companies and it will lead to more software development work being done in India thus creating more direct and indirect jobs, Anandakrishnan added.

Sundararaman said eseebargain.com has allied with Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) India to provide value-added services to the vendors. D&B will assign eseebargain.com's vendors with D-U-N-S numbers after routine validation procedures and assign risk scores based on financial and non-financial parameters based on its Indicative Risk Score (IRS) model.

eseebargain has two offices in Tamil Nadu--Chennai and Coimbatore--and plans to open four more across the country. It also plans to open offices in USA, Europe and South East Asia for direct marketing and client servicing.

Sundararaman said the registration for Indian vendors will be free till a critical mass is reached. eseebargain.com, however, will charge a small percentage of the successful transactions carried out through the site from the vendors. The portal hopes to touch $ 10 million in revenue in the next 10 months.

He also said the information collected by the company will be used to create a detailed vendor profile, which is then displayed to the client in the process of vendor selection. All information that a prospective client needs to select a vendor is displayed in the vendor profile while at the same time confidentiality and privacy of the vendor are safeguarded. "This would ensure that the potential of the SME sector in India in the IT industry that has been lying untapped would soon be made available across the globe."

Supporting such efforts, R Rajalakshmi, Director, STPI, said nearly 80 percent of the 5,600 software units registered with STPI nationally are in the SME segment. These companies can benefit from the consortia approach and also benefit from authentication from competent, neutral exchanges.