Interview: a2zApplications.com – Business apps as subscriptions

Today we have with us, the Chief Marketing Officer of a2zApps.com, Mr. Abhijit Das. a2zApps.com claims to be India’s First Multi-Tenant, Multi-Utility Software-as-a-Service Platform for businesses. They operate into the s-a-a-s realm helping businesses with tailored applications.

The a2zapps team.

Here is an interview we did we Mr Abhijit Das;

Who coined the term a2zApplications? Some background,if you can share with us.

It is not a2zapplications, it is a2zapplications.com. But we have recently changed our brand name to a2zapps.com to make it shorter. As founder’s vision was to make business software as simple as consumer-based web applications like amazon.com, yahoo etc. and provide an online business platform where any business applications such as sales, HR, project management etc. can be deployed, he chose the name as it is a simple, easy to remember, self-explanatory name that itself reflects its business model. The name clearly implies that all types (a-to-z) of business applications are delivered to customers over the Internet (therefore .com)

Several Internet companies release their "product" on the free model as well. How do you overshadow such offerings?

Actually no one offers anything for free, it’s all a part of the business model, up to the extent of a model of getting acquired because of having a large captive base in this internet age. Also most of the free offerings are point applications or non mission critical applications like mail chat or contact management etc. with no uptime commitment or service level agreements. You can take an example of gmail which is still marked as beta as they don’t want to commit any SLA to end-users. The moment you go for their SLA-based plan, they charge you.

A2zapps is a serious player and we play in the space of real business applications that are mission critical for our users. Also, we commit uptime and service level agreements to customers. Customers are also aware of the benefits of the same and use only “SLA” agreed business applications. We therefore see no threat from those who talk about providing free.

How can the nascent software based startups compete with the already established business houses?

The established players are big and therefore often tend to create complicated systems that require heavy spends on hardware, implementation and support. They also require specialized skills as they are meant for the high end of the enterprise organizations.

However large enterprises are probably 12-14% of the overall market. To address the SMB space the established players therefore either use the same product, which becomes difficult to use and expensive, or try creating a new product where the product development costs again make the product prohibitively expensive.

Nascent software startups therefore need to be innovative. They also understand the pulse of the SMB as they are themselves an SMB. They therefore focus on areas like easy to use, low on implementation time, features at par with the enterprise class ones and above all something that is fully used and costs in fractions of the established products. The 86% of the rest of the market needs these features and therefore if the startups focus on the 86% they would be more successful than the established players in that segment.

In general, the software market is too crowded. How do you think a site like a2zApplications has a chance to make a splash?

The market for complete business application suite on subscription in India is practically zero. On one side, the market has a lot of subscription based point solutions like mail, hosted contact centers, hosted PBX etc., essentially communication tools or a single app focused online solution like HR or Project Management etc. On the other side, it’s filled with on-premise complicated ERP/CRM/SCM/Project Management systems.

The SMBs neither can fully work with simply mail or contact management, nor are in a position to get an expensive BPR and consulting done to implement complex business application(s).

a2zapps.com being a complete business application suite on subscription model therefore has every reason to make a splash. The Indian SMEs need a2zapps.com.

How did a2zApplications bootstrap? Was it self financed?

Seed fund was provided by the founder himself and his family members. Seeing a big opportunity ahead, one of the leadership team members has also invested a significant amount. The company has not secured any funds from any outside investors yet.

Who are the team members apart from you and what are their roles at a2zApplications?

The company was founded by NRIs- Kantanu and Rajneet in mid 2006. The company has been able to rope in three key people for its leadership team since then. The team comprises of people with excellent academic background, rich industry experience (more than 70 yrs of exp. in total), complimentary skills and an undying passion.

Kantanu Kundu- CEO, Chairman and Founder

Surajit Sinha- Chief Customer and Product Strategy Officer

Abhijit Das- Chief Marketing Officer

Rajneet Bhatia- Director, Operations & Foundation and Founder

Pranab Bhuyan- COO and EVP, Corporate Policy, Law and Strategy

“Businesses of all sizes and industries can develop their business software solutions”. Please specify the variability of your products in respect to the different types of business organizations as your customers.

Our on-demand Business Platform (we don’t call it a product as we sell subscriptions to customers, not the product itself) is designed to support every function within an enterprise like marketing, sales, support, finance, invoicing, HR/payroll, inventory, planning, forecasting, revenue, collectibles etc. On the other side the platform supports various verticals like Education, Healthcare, Professional Services, Hospitality, Real-estate, Manufacturing, Media/Publishing and Financial Services etc.

With the unique product design we can provide the customers with the look and feel they want and help them grow with incremental features and modules on the same platform and off the same business data as and when they need. This is a feature that every Indian SME would love to have.

What is the scenario of a2zApplications in India compared to the competition in the market abroad?

We are presently focussed at only serving the Indian SME. As India is such a large country and having a very large SME base, we believe that we can take on any global leaders in the future if SMEs here consider our business platform a must-to-have kind of tool for their business success.

What’s your Revenue Model? Please suggest the most estimable revenue model you’d have come across in the past?

We have a complete subscription based revenue model that can support various sizes of customer organisations. To ensure that it is delivered at the right price points, we have 4 different editions as mentioned below based on different user patterns and the business complexity.

1. Individual Edition- This is meant for independent consultants and micro organizations that have not more than a single user. Typically the price comes to about 700 rupees per month.
2. Team Edition- This is for micro organizations with say a group of 3-5 users where they pay 650 rupees per user per month, but this plan does not support any data security within the organization. So every user can see the data of the other users.
3. Power Pack Edition- This plan allows a customer to define all types of data security except some advanced security features such as Role hierarchy etc. within their organization for protecting unwanted users from viewing specific set of data. This edition starts from 1200 rupees per user per month.
4. Professional Edition- This has all advanced features including all possible security mechanisms. It is ideal for organizations with multi-level hierarchy and/or multiple divisions. This edition starts at 1800 rupees per user per month.

All the editions vary from each other and have a unique value add, however there is need for all the four editions to help the Indian SME market with an affordable business tool.

What’s your employee strength? Any geographical expansion lately?

We are currently a 12-members team operating out of Delhi. We are in discussion with some channel sales partners in other cities for making our services available there. As we are an Internet company, we are able to work closely with customers from any cities in India.

Can you share top-3 learning experiences with a2zApplications?

1. Indian SME’s need easy to use applications and do not like to invest upfront

2. The biggest bottleneck for Indian SMEs is to do IT in-house

3. There was not a single complete business application suite available on subscription (on SaaS platform model) in India before a2zapps.com.

What’s the biggest surprise you’ve had in the business recently?

For a startup every thing is a surprise, be it a new customer, a new news or a new employee etc. We need to analyze the surprises, extract the positives out of them and move forward.

What do you have to share as a part of agenda-2009?

We have a 3-points agenda:

• • To reach out to the SMEs across India and give them a sense of the tool that we have developed for them that can help them compete with their competitors and stay ahead of the curve.
  • To help the SMEs to be noticed as the emerging enterprises of tomorrow and help India’s economy to grow
  • To lead Software-as-a-Service Platform (known as Platform-as-a-Service or PaaS) revolution in India from the front and move in the direction of building a world-class product company out of India

No related posts.

Tagged as: india, interview, saas, startup