Software firm in growth mode

Chandigarh-based Cellebrum, a telecom product, services, application and solution provider, has emerged as one of the largest and the fastest-growing solution providers in the region.

A flagship of B K Modi Group, the five-year-old company has acquired a 35 per cent market share in the north and 20 per cent across India. The company offers solutions to the telecom companies (both wireless and wire line), media houses (electronic and print), banking institutions, and corporate houses, on infrastructure.

In an exclusive interview with Business Standard, the company's Chief Operating Officer, Dhiraj Aggarwal, said the demand for telecom software had grown in the past two years.

"Earlier the subscribers did not use the value-added services extensively, but now the operators try to compete on the basis of just value-added services. A lot of usage is demanded on various movie and cricket updates. Music, movies and cricket are the front runners these days and the take-up on news up dates is not much," Aggarwal told Business Standard.

The company is associated with all the leading telecom operators like Hutch, Reliance, BSNL, MTNL, Spice, Connect, Idea and Airtel.

Cellebrum provides integrated solutions by putting in hardware, software application, content and manpower. "Our business is spread as far as Kerala and the far east. We are also engaged in providing regional content in Assamese and Malyalam also," he added.

Thirty-five per cent of the company expenses are spent on research and development, and it has a soft set-up of virtual network, run by a team of 40 people at Parwanoo in Himachal Pradesh. The company employs 102 computer professional spread throughout India.

Aggarwal, an IIM Calcutta graduate, said the industry was growing very fast (the software has to be updated every three minutes), so in the wake of faster growth and better opportunities, the attrition rate was very low.

The company has done overseas business in the US and Africa for Media Plaza, SMS.AC and Egypt Network. Cellebum is also on the threshold of starting a joint venture in China, the memorandum of understanding for which has already been signed.

The company recorded a turnover of Rs 25 crore last year and has set a target of Rs 50 crore for the current year. "We are optimistic about the future on the basis of our experiences".

He corroborated his stand saying ring tones worth Rs 40 crore were downloaded last year and were likely to grow five times to Rs 200 crore in the current year," he added.

He also said the company has offered the Punjab government a mobile enabling application, in synergy with e-governance, to make public processes easy.

He explained through the automatic system the database would be made available and the subscribers would be able to keep track of their application for passports or any other documents through the short messaging system. This would involve a lot of time, money and energy for both the government and the public.