Manthan churns out business analytics tools

Atul Jalan, founder and managing director of IT services firm NetKraft, has started a new firm, Manthan, which aims to sell business analytics products to large retailers.

Jalan, chief analytics officer of Bangalore based Manthan, told reporters here on Thursday, the two products, called AstrA and ARC will help retailers make better use of large amounts of data they may already be collecting.

AstrA is an enterprise performance management tool, Jalan said. It will help retailers track the execution of their business plans by collecting and running "transactional data" through various programmes.

ARC provides "analytical reporting capability," allowing operational heads to get snapshots of their domains on a daily basis through "dashboards". They can use the dashboards as starting points and look for details as required, he said.

The global market for analytics products is $35 billion, Jalan said.Analyst firm Gartner places Manthan's "product space" in the "on the rise" category in its "hype cycle" for retail technologies.

The "hype cycle" is one of the ways Gartner comments on trends in various industry sectors, technologies, and markets.

Manthan was "currently working with a Fortune 500 firm" where its products had been deployed. "Our target customers are the tier I and II retailers in North America and Europe, but our products are also being deployed in Australia and China," a company release said.

Manthan presently has a staff of 200.