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eseebargain.com plans to invest Rs 6-7 cr soon

R. Y. Narayanan

COIMBATORE, Dec. 8

THE `first B2B e-exchange' in the country -- `eseebargain.com' -- for sourcing IT services by overseas clients from offshore service providers in India, hopes to conclude the first business deal at the beginning of the New Year.

The company is planning to make an investment of about Rs 6-7 crore in the next one year to create the required infrastructure, including overseas offices.

Speaking to Business Line here, Mr K.S. Sundara Raman, Managing Director, eseebargain.com, said it was the first IT exchange in the country. He focussed at present on areas like software development and related services.

He was not concentrating now on IT enabled service providers like medical transcriptionists, though there were a few enquiries in this area since this sector was still to stabilise.

Explaining the objectives of the launch of eseebargain.com, which has been promoted by the Coimbatore-based sugar major Bannari Amman Sugars Ltd (BASL) group, he said globally there was an increasing trend to outsource service needs from third party serv ice providers. India, with its strong IT base, was eminently positioned to take advantage of this trend.

He said while bigger IT companies in the country were in a position to procure orders from clients abroad, the medium-sized and smaller IT companies were at a disadvantage.

This arose because the potential customers from abroad need to be assured of the business capability and credibility of their service providers in India. For smaller and medium companies, marketing their capabilities abroad was also a costly exercise. Hi s company sought to fill this vacuum.

Mr Sundara Raman said the advantage of the IT exchange was that the time taken for identification of a reliable service provider by the clients was reduced drastically since his company has built up a data base of such service providers and their areas o f competence.

So far, about 50 IT service providers, mostly Chennai and Bangalore-based, have enlisted with his company. The overseas clients' number was, however, relatively small as his company had just commenced operations.

He said identification of IT service providers was a rigorous exercise and their credibility was put to a thorough verification. A due diligence check was done on prospective vendors and an onsite verification was also done. Besides, a risk analysis was done by Dun and Bradstreet.

As an IT exchange, eseebargain.com provided details of the vendors' abilities, along with details of his company's verification processes and its impressions on the vendors, even while protecting confidentiality of the information provided.

The prospective clients selected the vendors based on their price-profile matching system, after which the client and the vendors concluded the contract.

Mr Sundara Raman said the focus was on small and medium IT service providers, with an employee strength of about 50 to 80 people, an annual turnover of Rs 3-5 crore and a four-year track record. It was on October 30 that the company's Web site was launch ed and about 50 vendors have enlisted during the promotional offer period.

He said there were exchanges for IT hardware or IT support services. But his company was the first IT exchange for software services in the country. Asked about the small number of Coimbatore based IT companies in the vendors' list, he said this was esse ntially because information required was hard to come by from companies here.

He said he charged a professional fee of 3 per cent to 15 per cent of the project value. This was based on project size, repeat orders, etc. He claimed the fee was far less than what the middlemen charged in the business and it was charged only from the vendor/service provider with no obligation on the client.

Mr Sundara Raman said his company was holding discussions with a San Francisco-based Escrow provider for ensuring safety regarding the financial aspect of the transactions concerned.