What are your company’s strengths in terms of manpower?

We have around 75 people. Of the top management, most of them are from IIT and some from IIM. We plan to raise this number to 300. We have a development center and we are ramping up our infrastructure. Presently, we have 30,000 sq.ft. – 15,000 sq.ft. in Hyderabad and 15,000 sq.ft. in Chennai.

Who are your competitors in the B2B business?

The companies operating in the same space are Commerceone, Verticalnet, Ariba, Webmethods.

What has contributed to the company revenue in the year 1999-2000, which increased from Rs.85.5 lakhs to Rs.305.04 lakhs?

We were in the consulting business, essentially doing power projects. These are long gestation projects on which we were working since 1996 and which took some time to fructify. These were partly realize last year. The same is spread over a couple of years, which will help us meet our projections.

Our portal www.build2020.com, which we have sold to a consortium of construction companies in Malaysia, and the portal, www.24x7commerce.com, which we have sold to the US companies, have also contributed to the revenues in FY2000. These accounted to around 60 percent of our turnover in 1999-2000.

What will your business focus be?

We are hosting 10 verticals currently. And its not just construction, we also have people with expertise in corporate banking and other areas too. We collectively have people from each of these industries with about 8 to 9 years experience. So its not that the focus will be power or construction. It was totally construction at one point of time.

Can you throw some light on the product - Virtual Commodity exchange?

The product "Virtual Commodity Exchange", which we had planned earlier, was later enhanced to what is currently called www.24x7commerce.com. The product enables the companies to run their business better. The product is mainly sold to large companies, since they are in a position to buy from us. The large companies prefer to own the portals themselves and our company sells them the license. Our product allows the companies to map the organization, with customized restrictions on access of information. We are trying to vertically integrate the business of these companies and it is easy because we have been with them right from the start of the project.

What is your focus on software vis-à-vis consulting?

Today, the focus of our company is on software moreso in B2B solutions because we see tremendous growth potential in that line.

How do you justify the premium?

Firstly, large portion of the equity that has been brought in is at a premium. The management is also very strong and the company has orders in hand. We also have a very strong business model.

We are very confident of getting at least Rs.12 crore of business based on the two orders that we have. The market cap of Commerceone is about $7 to $8 billion. This is just an indication of the kind of potential our company has. We have marketing offices in Malaysia . We also have marketing offers in the US. We are now moving to Europe and Australia. We can definitely match the projections we have made.