Karan Sehgal
Goa may still be a dot on the large map of India’s information-technology (IT) exports, but both the IT companies and the State Government recently joined hands together to showcase to delegates from around the world at IndiaSoft what Goa is capable of.
IndiaSoft is an yearly B2B networking event, which recently happened at Hyderabad, wherein the State Government paid for a pavilion so that Goan IT companies could have their own booths to develop business relationships with potential buyers.
Since the government took care of pavilion cost, the participating companies had to only pay for their travel and accommodation costs. Such a collaborative effort is going to yield results for Goa in the long run.
A number of Goan IT companies said that they met potential clients and strategic partners from countries like Argentina, Chile, Columbia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Morocco and Russia at IndiaSoft.
If not for an event like IndiaSoft, these companies would have to go to each of these countries to find business partners, which they may not find feasible either from financial or practical viewpoint. This is where conferences like IndiaSoft play a huge part in bringing the IT buyers and sellers under one roof.
Mangirish Salelkar, president, Goa Technology Association (GTA), said, “When we decided to attend IndiaSoft, we got a bunch of 10 export-oriented IT companies from Goa, which were willing to go with us to the event. Of these, 2-3 were start-ups and the remaining were mature IT companies with an annual turnover of Rs 2 crore to 5 crore.”
Salelkar continued, “Our aim is to take Goa’s IT exports to the level of 1% of India’s total IT exports by 2022. For this objective, it was really important for IT companies in Goa to showcase their capabilities at IndiaSoft. At the moment, the value of Goa’s IT exports stand at Rs 85 crore per year, which is just 0.024% of overall IT exports of India, which stand at Rs 3.5 lakh crore.”
It is really interesting to note that Goan IT companies are looking at newer markets in Latin America and Africa for exports. Traditionally, Indian IT players have focussed at the US and Europe for exports. Focussing on newer markets helps the companies in de-risking their business model.
Tangentia India was one of the ten IT companies from Goa, which participated at IndiaSoft. Close to 50 delegates from Africa, Latin America and Central Asia visited Tangentia’s booth and there were many serious enquiries that could potentially yield business.
Tangentia, which has participated at many global IT shows like CEBIT in Hannovar, Germany in the past, launched two brand new solutions at IndiaSoft, which included Tangentia - Business Automation Platform (T-BAP), which is Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Business Process Management (BPM) and Document Management System (DMS) in a single box.
Another solution launched by the company was Tangentia Gateway - Digital Warehouse, which is an addition to the Tangentia Gateway solution already at use at 1000+ customers worldwide and helps automate the warehouse for vendors to the large retailers and market-places globally.
Shantanu Paknikar, chief technology officer (CTO), Tangentia India, said, “IndiaSoft is a good platform for reaching out to potential customers in new markets and it was a great experience to showcase here. We thank the Government of Goa for helping with putting together the contingent of companies from Goa.”
Goan IT companies clearly seized the opportunity by launching new products and showcasing them to delegates at IndiaSoft. Some of the companies also mentioned that they will be modifying their existing products to suit the needs of their foreign clientele.
Remmie Azavedo, chief executive officer (CEO), FabCoders Retail Software, said, “We make billing software for supermarkets, restaurants and cafes. At IndiaSoft, we met foreign delegates, who were willing to sell this software to businesses in their countries. Thanks to the event, we have people in South Africa showing interest in our software. We will be modifying our software so that it is in tune with requirements in those countries.”
Interacting with delegates from Latin American and African countries has also opened new ways of doing business for Goan IT companies. In some cases, participating companies interacted with middlemen, who were willing to buy their product to sell it to final consumer in their own country.
Salelkar said, “There were a lot of delegates from Columbia at the event. Actually, Columbia has a treaty with the US. As per which, if a company shows that it has a client or a partner in Columbia, it gets direct access to the US.”
Teknorix was another Goan IT company, which participated at IndiaSoft. Teknorix is into product development and it has its own cloud based recruiting platform, which it has already sold to 3,000 companies in the world. Teknorix used opportunity provided by IndiaSoft to get into IT services space.
Bhavit Naik, co-founder and CEO of Teknorix, said, “We want to provide our product development knowledge as a service to other companies, which want to come out with their own products. So, this was our idea of participating at IndiaSoft to find companies, which we can help with our know-how.”
The IT sector in Goa has shown a very proactive approach to reach out to customers, attend events like IndiaSoft and spread the word about State’s IT potential to all the stakeholders. In the long run, IT may emerge as a leading export-oriented sector of Goa much like pharmaceuticals.
