Mr Ramakant: Any product made out of Singapore has a lot of respect. |
Starting up
I was in the computer and digital industry, working for multi-national corporations. In 2001, I came out and set up a branch office of an Indian company, which lasted until 2004. It closed down, so I needed to start my own business. I had the idea and some experience, and we started to look for help and investment.
Our first office was in Singapore, where I am based, and later we set up a presence in Dubai, where my other partner was, so we had a foothold in both places. In January 2005, an investor put in a little funding, so we started recruiting people.
The Singapore advantage
Singapore being small, we were always targeting businesses outside. We appointed partners in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and India. One of my investors was the CEO of a public-listed company in India, so we had a
tie-up for them to represent us. Less than 50 percent of our turnover was from Singapore in the first year, then less than 30 per cent, but we had the entire infrastructure in Singapore.
Any product made out of Singapore has a lot of respect. Dubai would have asked for 25 to 30 per cent less if we were operating out of India. The branding of Singapore has definitely helped us, because they think it's so cheap in India, which is not a fact, but it's the mindset.
Singapore companies can look to the Middle East. Yes, it's not easy to find a partner, but there's a lot of respect for Singapore companies nowadays. Once you find somebody and you do honest, prompt work, success is guaranteed.
Merger talks
We went to sell our solution to CERT. They were very happy with our product, found synergies between the two companies and wanted to go beyond the customer-supplier relationship. We had a capital flow problem. We were growing well: US$600,000 in our first year, then US$1.6 million, then US$3 million. But if we grew like this, how many years would it take to get to US$40-million, US$50-million projects?
It was time for us to latch on to someone big and they had a good local name. We started discussions in July 2007. Then in September, a US$43-million Abu Dhabi taxi company tender came up, which we did together, and it helped expedite the merger. We signed in November, and it took three or four months to incorporate the new company, CERT Infotrack Telematics, in Dubai. We made the first announcement in Singapore in May, and will announce it in Abu Dhabi in June.
Going forward
We can immediately leapfrog to the US$50-million projects. There's a US$60-million project in India that we are looking at, as well as some of the tenders that we never had the strength to go for, or lacked either the profile or the capability to execute before.
The telematics opportunity
Very huge. Telematics is a US$30-billion business and growing at 200 to 300 per cent per annum. There are new entrants, but there is new awareness. Just three years ago, it was "nice to have"; now it's a "need to have" because of security and because of costs coming down. Now, it is selling much more easily than it did in the past. It's even a priority – the petroleum industry is insisting all transport bids must have it. Even in transporting cement – it is used not only for tracking, but also to monitor that the cement is not hardening, and
so on.
When we started, the telematics market was not mature in India, only in Singapore and the Middle East. People couldn't afford this technology. It
grew in India only in the last two or three years. Now, 50 per cent of our revenue comes from India alone. We are in the right place at the right time, have the most experience in the industry and good backend support, so we
are very optimistic.
|
