Our aim is to entice the good resellers to join us, to maximize our sales

VCustomer has been in the BPO industry since 1999, and now it is foraying
into the CRM space. Sanjay Kumar is confident that India is ready for CRM, and
has already put together plans to appoint resellers across the country:

How is the market for CRM software in India?

There are two types of companies operating in the market currently. The
first type is looking at deploying customer relationship management (CRM) and
the other consists of companies who already have CRM but are looking for the
solutions to go with it. We are seeing a demand from both sides. But India is a
price-sensitive market so the key is to create attractive price points.

Which vertical you are targeting?

VCustomer actually entered the CRM space in 2004. A customer in the US came to
us for an e-mail platform. Soon after that, we got another request for
Interactive Voice Response (IVR). So we were basically building pieces of CRM,
so we decided to put it all together to come out with a unified system. Our
focus will be on retail segment, from small retails to the large chains. Our CRM
software is also targeted at the retail segment.

India is a price-sensitive market so the key is to create attractive price points Sanjay Kumar CEO, vCustomer Corporation

How are you positioning your software to offer an edge over other products
available in the market?

We design our software on a platform and that is an edge over others. It is
Web 2.0 enabled, can run on any server, on any cost model, is reliable and has
the ability to deploy multiple platforms. The major value that we are leveraging
on is the real-time analytics engine. The biggies only handle one aspect of CRM,
for example calls. We take all five channels-phone, IVR, e-mail, SMS and web and
handle them efficiently. Our aim is to take a consolidated database and run the
software on it.

How many resellers are you planning to appoint?

Essentially, we will be using two models-direct and channel. Our focus will
be on appointing regional resellers in South, North and East, as we already have
a direct presence in West. We are planning to appoint six to seven resellers,
who will be thoroughly trained by us and work with us for long term.

Why do you think people are hesitating to go in for CRM software?

I think it is the cost factor. While homegrown software could have earlier
been free of cost, it's not possible now. CRM software starts at about
$10-20,000, and we are not talking about software from the biggies here. The
message we want to convey is that if you can invest Rs 1 lakh in CRM then you
should surely consider approaching us. We want to reach out to all players,
entry to high-end level.

How can resellers leverage on this opportunity?

CRM is a revenue growth opportunity for all companies. With the current
recession, companies are bound to lose customers but using CRM, they can work on
retaining their customers.

For resellers, when clients realize that you have an offering they can't get
elsewhere, they will surely come to you, which means more business.

What is your roadmap for customized CRM software?

We started with retail for our Q2 launch. In Q3, we are targeting the
hospitality industry and then telecom in Q4. The idea is to get our set of
resellers to work with these different industries. But if required, we will
consider appointing other specialized resellers also.

Our aim is to entice the good resellers to join us, who will maximize our
sales. If we are successful, the resellers will automatically come to us.

RUTH SAMSON

ruths@cybermedia.co.in