Bitten by the business bug

Q&A: Indranil Chakravarty

Indranil Chakravarty

For Indranil Chakravarty, managing director, Scicom Infotech, it was both pull and push factors that brought him back to India after spending more than two decades abroad, where he built a successful career both at Siemens Corporate Research and Schlumberger in the US. While the push factor was his penchant to start something of his own, the pull factor was being closer to home and his parents. In an interview with Business Standard, he talks about Scicom's future prospects in India and his entrepreneurial drive.

What made you start Scicom Infotech in India, especially when most of your clients are overseas?

I was actively involved with R&D activities in my earlier jobs and increasingly felt I could do all this research for my own enterprise. I also experimented with floating a company, XOX Corporation in the US, as a co-founder.

The company was quite successful and listed on NASDAQ. After selling it, I wanted to do something on a much larger platform and started working on Scicom. As far as shifting to India, it was the technically qualified manpower which was a driving force.

What problems did you face while setting up Scicom?

Fortunately, I did not face many problems because initially, Scicom was in partnership with IIS (now Xansa India). IIS took care of most of the teething problems. Today, Scicom is a separate entity and has overcome most of its initial hitches and hurdles.

So what is Scicom's areas of strength?

Scicom has strengths in designing and developing applications for mobile devices, PDAs and desktop products. Besides, we have got into niche areas, especially in exploration and production in the oil and gas sector.

In the future, we see Scicom as a science and technology focus company, supplying innovation solutions. We are also looking at excelling in a couple of verticals. Currently, Scicom is actively associated with state governments in developing mapping and imaging applications in the oil sector.

Most IT companies eventually get into tie-ups and joint ventures. Does Scicom also have such plans?

We are not looking at JVs as such but we are very open to acquiring companies overseas, particularly those in the same domain as ours. We are also looking at organic growth and intensifying our reach. For instance, we are looking at increasing our client base globally in our business of mobile phone applications and mapping and managing large volumes data.

Scicom has also made forays into disaster management. How far have you grown in this area?

Scicom Infotech is pursuing its disaster management business through its associate company in the US "" Scicom Infrastructure Services Inc. Any disruption in the daily business of an organisation due to the loss of critical data can have a disastrous effect on a company.

Any unforeseen disaster can result in outrageous interruptions which can go on for hours, days or weeks and can cause colossal losses to a company. The company is involved in identifying financial and operational impacts of these disasters and their solutions.

How do you think the investment climate has changed in India?

In certain areas like telecommunications, infrastructure has developed phenomenally. We now have a much broader bandwidth, which particularly helps companies like Scicom. The government policies have also made it possible for Iris to invest in India and entrepreneurs to set up new businesses.

And are you also looking at setting up BPO operations like other IT and ITES companies ?

We will restrict ourselves to BPO operations only to provide end-to-end services to our clients, especially international ones. We have no plans to go into call centres or any general services. We will keep ourselves focussed in niche areas.