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He was not even born in Mysuru. Sid Mookerji came to the palace city for the first time as a 10-year old in 1976, when his father Late. Kamal Krishna Mookerji got transferred to the city-based Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) as a senior scientist. He did his studies at CFTRI school and then Mahajana College before getting enrolled for engineering at Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS).
After stints with couple of IT firms such as TCS and Syntel, when he started his own venture in 1994, he decided to give back to the city where he spent his formative years.
After stints with couple of IT firms such as TCS and Syntel, when he started his own venture in 1994, he decided to give back to the city where he spent his formative years.
Software Paradigms International (SPI), the IT services and solutions provider that caters exclusively to the retail industry, has over 1,000 of its total employee base of around 1,500 in Mysuru. And in the ongoing calendar, SPI is all set to cross $100 million (around Rs 622 crore) in revenues, becoming the first IT services company in Karnataka, located outside of Bengaluru, to cross this milestone.
“I grew up in Mysuru where I studied from my standard V to pre-university. I always wanted to give back to the city and the best way to do that was to provide employment to the people. So that was one of the main reasons why I started out from there,” said Mookerji, CEO, who is around 48 now.
In 1997, when he started setting up a delivery centre in Mysuru, there were a couple of software companies in the city, but none of them were doing software exports. IT major Infosys came to Mysuru only after 2000. The internet speed available in the city during those days was around 64 kbps and that was also available through dial up connections. But things improved much faster, said Mookerji, as “we got enough attention and support from the government and we are getting this even today.”
“A big challenge that the IT industry faces is to find good talent and to retain them. The main benefit for us in the city has been getting access to good and quality resources and built an organisation based on that which we could not have done in Bangalore.”
In 2006, SPI set up its own campus, which is spread across over 15 acres, with around two lakh square feet built up area. Apart from Mysuru, the company has a centre in Kathmandu (Nepal) where it employs around 100 people. It also has around 350 employees in the US while it has smaller presence in Singapore, Sydney, Brazil and London.
The company currently caters to over 200 clients including well-known names in the retail space such as Macy’s, Walmart, Carrefour, Napa, Saks and Ahold. Apart from services, SPI also sells these retailers software solutions which it has build over period of time, both organically and inorganically.
Since 2006, the company has done eight acquisitions including two last year. In the current calendar, Mookerji said, SPI is looking at finalising two more acquisitions in the mobility and product space, which may help it expand its presence outside of Mysuru and strengthen its presence in Europe.
So far, SPI does not have any external investors and has zero debt in its balance sheet. During the past four years, the company has seen 4X growth primarily on the back of the strong demand it has been seeing from e-commerce players. The company's revenue in 2014 is estimated to be in the range of $80 million.
“There is a lot of growth in the retails space; there is no question about it. The whole industry is being disrupted by mobile phones and by online. So first 10 years, it was only brick and mortar model and now everybody is kind of scrambling to figure out how they can participate in the whole e-commerce space and investing on technologies,” said Mookerji.
“And because we are a specialist player, the kinds of conversation we are having with the customers are very strategic as compared to tactical one.”
