Made in Chennai, for the world

Chennai: Two global banks just signed up for a banking product paying Rs70 crore each in licence fees, a rookie entrepreneur’s data security product has the largest global user base at 25 million, another company’s products are so popular that three of every five Fortune 500 companies use them. And there are many more global beaters being added to that list.The common thread — all these are tech products designed and developed in Chennai.
The city’s techscape is quietly witnessing a change, becoming the hotbed of IT products. "If Bengaluru is for software exports, Chennai is clearly leading when it comes to IT products," says Sumit Ganguli, CEO of GAVS Tech.
Some of them: Intellect (formed from Polaris), K7 Computing, Zoho, Freshworks, Ramco Systems, GAVS Tech, Facilio, Uniphore and FourKites are painting the globe with ‘Made in Chennai’ products.
"Making a global product is a minimum 10-year plan. We are maturing in the products space; faster than many think. Chennai’s entrepreneurs have the mental strength to develop one. It requires the tenacity of an entrepreneur to develop one," says Arun Jain, founder of Polaris (now Intellect), one of the earliest IT product companies from the city. "IT software is a garage business. If one garage is shut or becomes uncompetitive, then there is another. Products are a different kettle of fish."
K7 Computing’s J Kesavardhan says it was a dream to build a global company from Chennai. "To me the key differentiator is the talent and entrepreneurship spirit that makes this city distinct from others," he says. It isn’t easy to run one, but when you gain traction, there is no looking back.
A deep academics and research environment, represented not just by the IITs and NITs, but also a network of IIITs and other colleges focusing on deep tech, has helped Chennai make the shift from shipping engineers in bulk to IT services enterprises to solving the talent needs of niche tech product companies.
Industry estimates peg Chennai’s software products industry at close to $1 billion in revenue, housing a workforce of around 20,000, and raising more than $600 million from global investors. "The agility and nimbleness of smaller enterprises has made this an era of David," GAVS Tech’s Ganguli says. He believes the city’s stable workforce also helps keep attrition to one of the lowest in the country.
The ‘tenacity’ of techies here is the differentiator, Intellect’s Jain said. "Can you believe it that we have 100 people in our core development team for whom Intellect is the first job. They have never written a CV. That is the drive that is needed for a products developer," he says.
Rajendran Dandapani, director of Zoho University, Zoho’s own alternate products school, believes talent is in abundance if one decides to look beyond degrees and institutional pedigree. "Many people we recruit are fresh out of college, and some come in even younger through Zoho University. This helps us set the expectations right, and get them aligned with Zoho’s work culture," he says.
Now that the wheels have started to move, the contributors want this get recognition validated. "We have a maturity level certification for software services. The certification shows how mature the software developer is when it comes to delivering the services. We are working on getting the standards ready for products," says Jain.