July pursues services route

July Systems, a company into software solutions for mobile data services delivery, is rapidly moving towards a managed services model on their base platform product. The company had thus far remained strong in pushing their service delivery platform alone in the market.

"We have been making the shift to a managed services model over all of this year starting from the first quarter. We took it to market at the early part of the third quarter and we have already notched our first client. Our managed services is based on our expanded product platform from which we manage all elements of mobile data services from content provision to billing," said Ashok Narasimhan, chairman, CEO and co-founder of July Systems.

The move to managed services throws the doors open to a new kind of clientele. So far the company which concentrated more on telecom service providers, is now targeting pure content providers.

"Initially, in the mobile world, telecom service providers were the primary retailers of mobile content. That is changing. Today, content is provided by third party retailers while service providers provide just the transport and easy billing facilities. For eg, now the biggest retailer of mobile content is

Indiatimes.com. In Europe, already 60 per cent of mobile content comes from third-party retailers. This change in dynamics throws open a whole new market," says Narasimhan.

The company will concentrate on US and Europe with their managed services.

"US is the smallest market for data services in the world today. But that also meants the growth there is much higher. We will focus our energies with managed services in the western countries for some time. Maybe in another two quarters we will look to Asia as a market," said Narasimhan.

It should be kept in mind that managed services has been part of their offerings since the time of formation, but the company is aggressively pushing the front beginning this year as they believe that revenue generation will be more with the same. So much so, that they are restricting the platform work to higher versions as needed by the managed services division alone and "will not put too much effort into selling it" says Narasimhan.

Founded by Ashok Narasimhan and Rajesh Reddy in 2002 to tap into the growing mobile data services revolution by building a wireless superstructure for it, July Systems, secured $5.5 million in Series A funding from WestBridge Capital Partners, Acer Technology Ventures Asia Pacific and early-stage technology venture firm Jumpstartup.

In August this year, the company raised $10 million in Series B funding led by US VC firm Charles River Ventures and existing investors. This new money is being pumped into marketing for managed services and platform enhancements to enable delivery of more varied services to clients.

The company expects to break-even or even become cash positive by the next fiscal. The company has around 100 people on its rolls, 30 of whom are in pure product engineering. It has a development and delivery centre in Bangalore and marketing arm based in the US.

Speaking about the future of mobile data services, Narasimhan said, "There are so many possibilities left untapped with mobile data services. For eg., data service revenues have been taking place with an absolute lack of retailing knowledge. With our product and services we can bring fresh retailing to services with things like flexible pricing or gifting of services. The whole work is also highly complex. There are so many phone models, so many service providers and services have to work seamlessly with all of them. That's where our product will help," says Narasimhan.

With the mobile market expected to touch $120 billion in three years time and ringtones alone bringing in $3.5 billion already, the company will tap into this with their managed services where their revenue share could range from 20 per cent to 45 per cent.