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Snapshot of 30 Tech Start-Ups
acl wireless Ishoni Networks
AdventNet Ittiam Systems
Alopa Networks Jataayu
Aplion Networks July Systems
Bay Packets Technologies Lifetree Convergence
Bluefont Mistral Software
Component Insights Peak XV Networks
Cygsoft Phonologies
Deccanet SunTec
Impulsesoft Tejas Networks
Infozech Software UshaComm 
Ionic Microsystems WDC Solutions
iPDialog

Winphoria Networks
ipGen Inc. Wisor Telecom
ipolicy Networks Zintec
acl wireless

www.acl-wireless.com 
Segment Mobile application
Product Wireless instant messaging
Target Users Mobile service providers
CEO Sanjay Goyal
India Head —
Headquarters New Delhi
India Location —
Funding $1 million (1st round complete)
VCs INVESTED InterAsia Venture Management Fund
Started in 2000
Employees 50 (total), 49 (India)
Opportunity Think about Yahoo! Chat. Or MSN. Or ICQ! Now, imagine you want to do that round-the-clock. And get to anyone you want round-the-clock. Even when he is driving, or partying. Thanks to mobile phones, it is possible today.
Solution acl wireless equips the mobile service providers with solutions that allows you to do just that. What is more, you do not have to download anything. In that respect, it is better than your PC. For the operators, it is higher ARPU. You just have to use SMS to do that. Though in future when GPRS and 3G come, expect better functionalities.
Early Signs  Starting with a home-first approach, acl wireless targeted Indian mobile operators and today has seven deployments—Bharti Cellular (Delhi), Idea Cellular (Andhra Pradesh and Delhi), RPG (Chennai), and all four circles of Escotel. It then looked at the neighborhood market of Asia-Pacific, and has already tasted success with two installations—one each at AIS Thailand and Exelcom, Indonesia.
Challenge It is a tough market. The space is crowded. And the global marketing cost is high.
Plans To focus on markets in AsiaPac, Middle East, South Africa and Europe.
AdventNet

www.adventnet.com
Segment OSS
Product Network management
Target Users Service provider and equipment vendors
CEO Dr Sridhar Vembu
India Head Dr M Giridhar Krishna
Headquarters Pleasanton, CA, US
India Location Chennai
Funding NA
VCs INVESTED NA
Started in 1996
Employees 400 +
Opportunity The changing competitive landscape in the service provider business means that creating new services and managing resources cost-effectively have to be done simultaneously to protect bottom-line from falling. The web has offered a cost-effective way to manage network resources and information.
Solution AdventNet’s WebNMS is an open, scalable, carrier-grade management infrastructure platform that leverages on the benefits of N-tier Internet-based applications architecture. It is built to address the needs of the NOC users in a service provider, administrators, and end users who are interested in web-based self-provisioning of services. It provides provisioning, management of optical and IP/ATM core, SONET/DWDM/Ethernet metro equipment, and new access technologies, such as cable, DSL, optical and wireless. However, AdventNet offers many other solutions for application developers and integrators, which are not directly in the telecom space.
Early Signs    AdventNet already has more than 700 customers worldwide and offices in Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Texas, Canada, Europe and Japan. It also has partners in Asia-Pacific.
Challenge While AdventNet has tasted success, it is more of a software company. Its presence in the telecom service provider market, that the above product targets, is restricted. The company requires different strengths to market to the carriers and to the technology-focused developer community. That is a big challenge, which AdventNet will need to overcome in future
Alopa Networks

www.alopa.com 
Segment OSS
Product OSS for broadband service providers
Target Users Broadband service providers through equipment suppliers
CEO Michael P Foley
India Head Vijaya Verma
Headquarters Sunnyvale, California
India Location Bangalore
Funding $17.5 million (3rd round complete)
VCs INVESTED VantagePoint Venture Partners, Summit Accelerator Fund, Lucent Venture Partners, Rainbow Fund, Western Technology Investment
Started in 1999
Employees 94 (total), 54 (India)
Opportunity   The cable market is evolving from being a video-only conduit to a multi-vendor, multi-service delivery vehicle. The DOCSIS standard will accelerate introduction of new services.
Solution Alopa MetaServ is a provisioning platform that automates the entire provisioning life-cycle. It provides a single integrated infrastructure from which cable operators and broadband service providers can integrate existing legacy systems, enable easy and less expensive self-provisioning, and provide high-speed data, video-on-demand, and voice.
Early Signs  The company has already a backlog of orders and is expected to breakeven in first quarter of next year. The platform is deployed with customers and channel partners like Eastern Connecticut Cable, GCI, Motorola, Pace, Scientific Atlanta, Susquehanna Communications, Tellabs, Terayon, Wide Open West, and WorldCom Wireless. Also in talks with a large MSO in India.
Challenge The MSO market is highly varying from country to country.
Plans Operate a model where development is done in India. On the commercial side, decided to make Bangalore as the hub for Asia and Europe. Develop significant distribution channels.
Aplion Networks

www.aplion.com 
Segment OSS
Product Service creation platform
Target Users Service providers
CEO John Holobinko
India Head M Narasimha Rao
Headquarters Edison, NJ, US
India Location NCR (Noida)
Funding $37.5 million (Finished second round)
VCs INVESTED Investor AB/Investor Growth Capital; WR Hambrecht + Co, Intel Communications Fund; Ray Stata
Started in 1998
Employees 140+
Opportunity With bandwidth and quality-of-service more or less taken for granted, business customers are looking for services that would give business advantage, not just fatter pipes.
Solution Aplion’s Network Virtuoso integrated hardware and software service creation platform, which promises to allow service providers to create high-margin services over the existing infrastructure, while reducing service life-cycle costs, thus improving bottom-lines. Revenue from business customer is increased while capital and operating costs are reduced.
Early Signs  The product has won many ‘product of the year’ awards.
Challenge The company is still focused primarily on the North American markets. With the service provider capex scenario tight over there, it will have to look at the fast-growing Asian markets.
Bay Packets Technologies

www.baypackets.com 
Segment Service creation
Product Application server, application suite, and mediation
Target Users All voice and converged service providers
CEO Ken Epps
India Head Sanjay Singh
Headquarters Fremont CA, US
India Location Noida (National Capital Region)
Funding $ 25 million (2nd round complete)
VCs INVESTED Anthelion Capital II, L.P, Blueprint Ventures, Diamondhead
Ventures, INC3 Ventures, Lucent Venture Partners, TeleSoft, Quidditch Partners, Mentmore Ventures
Started in February 2000
Employees About 80 (total), 40 (India)
Opportunity It is simple. The packet technologies are more resource efficient, but do not match the traditional TDM world in terms of services delivered. How can the service provider get the best of both worlds?
Solution Bay Packets—like many others—tried to solve the familiar problem. Only difference, it is succeeding. Its solution consists of a network services platform (an applications server), a mediation product and a host of applications that run on its server, which it calls rapid service introduction (RSI) platform. The applications offered by it currently include voice VPN, toll free, unified communications, single number service, voicemail and Internet call manager.
Early Signs  Yes, there are already three deployments—two in the US and one in Europe, including one at ComCast. While the ComCast deal is for the mediation product, one of the other two is for application server, with voice VPN. The last is the entire suite of products—application server, applications, and mediation.
Challenge The focus is still on the US and Europe, where the capex by telcos has not been exciting. Many feel the situation will continue like that for some time. Bay Packets has to operate in these tough conditions. Or else, like many others have started doing, look at the growing markets of China, India, and SE Asia.
Plans Plans to go for the third round of funding and hopes to be profitable by early 2004.
Bluefont

www.bluefonttechnologies.com 
Segment Embedded solutions
Product Multiple protocol-networking gateway platform
Target Users Semiconductor and system-on-chip companies
CEO S Nagarajan
India Head —
Headquarters Bangalore
India Location —
Funding Pre-VC
VCs INVESTED —
Started in 2000
Employees 20 (total), 20 (India)
Opportunity The convergence marketplace.
Solution Bluefont’s first product platform will focus on a multiple protocol-networking gateway for high-bandwidth applications. The product platform IPs are based on streaming media and digital imaging.
Early Signs  While component IPs targeted at the semiconductor and associate segments are near completion and will be available by Q3 2002. The PLP is under development and is likely to be available by the year-end.
Challenge The challenge lies in coming up with differential features with low cost designs and lower power
consumption.
Plans To come out with a portfolio of products. Look at sales directly and through partners. Look at technology alliances.
Component Insights

www.cominsights.com 
Segment OSS/BSS
Product Network management and mediation
Target Users Service providers
CEO Ramesh Maganti
India Head Madhusudan Reddy
Headquarters Campbell, CA
India Location Bangalore
Funding NA
VCs INVESTED Anthelion Capital and Magnus Capital
Started in 1998
Opportunity In a recent panel discussion organized by VOICE&DATA, most service providers felt one of the toughest challenge before them is to make the new generation OSS/BSS applications work with the legacy systems, and managing the integration among multi-vendor solutions. The problem is enhanced when the requirement to build new services quickly is high.
Solution Component Insights provides an integration product suite that is NGOSS standard compliant, and provides application and service providers with a unified approach to manage, integrate and deploy rapid and competitive services. It has a series of products to handle different OSS requirements, such as integration, mediation and policy management.
Early Signs  Component Insights is an associate member of the TeleManagement Forum (TMF) and has been involved in the joint development of multiple Catalyst projects. One such project was showcased at the TeleManagement World Conference in May 2001 at Nice, France. Partners in this project were Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, IONA, Prism Technologies, Telcordia and IGS.
Challenge The biggest challenge that the company faces as of now is to convince the operators to look at the cost-effectiveness of its solutions and components-based technologies to maximize their revenues.
Plans Concentrate on product development and expand its reach in the Asian markets.
Cygsoft

www.cygsoft.com 
Segment OSS
Product Network management
Target Users Service provider
CEO Kiran Shah
India Head —
Headquarters Mumbai
India Location —
Funding $2 million (First round complete)
VCs INVESTED Citicorp International, IL&FS Ventures
Started in 2000
Opportunity Right from network rollout to guaranteed service delivery, a network manager has to manage a number of specific deliverables at each stage of network evolution. Added to that is the need to create quick services, ensure service levels, bill them, and take care of network faults. Today, service providers not only compete for higher revenues but also for optimizing bottom-lines.
Solution Cygsoft’s Constel platform promises to solve this problem by standardizing on a number of processes, thereby providing cost-saving through quicker problem-solving, allowing networks to grow without adding costly headcount, and making the scaling up smoother and hassle-free. Its HBCT is a tool that is targeted at the service providers who want to easily configure multiple devices. It allows them to group devices into various collections that can form a hierarchy, according to geographic or logical divisions based on customer profiles.
Early Signs  Has opened up an office in Silicon Valley for business development.
Challenge The lower capex spending by the US service providers mean that the company has to look at other geographies. The company has to look at the Asian markets for growth. Considering the fact that the operators in these markets are still in their network expansion phase, it could be a tough call for Cygsoft.
Deccanet

www.deccanetdesigns.com 
Segment Embedded solutions
Product IP cores and testing tools
Target Users Equipment manufacturers
CEO MT Karunakaran and R Venkat Rajendran
India Head —
Headquarters Bangalore
India Location —
Funding NA
VCs INVESTED GVFL, TDA Capital Partners, Intel Capital
Started in 1994
Employees 175
Opportunity With communications technologies increasingly moving towards convergence, embedded software and hardware design references will enable the developers of equipment manufacturers to design newer products quickly.
Solution Makes the core component designs for the ASIC and FPGA design cycles. The IP-cores are to help design complex systems on a chip for SDH, SONET, ATM/ Packet over SONET and PDH transmission products. On the software end, it has testing tools for embedded software.
Early Signs  On the hardware end, it has 7-8 major component reference designs. The company has opened offices in the US and UK, and has entered into partnerships with designers in Japan and Korea. Its products are being increasing accepted. AMD, Motorola, etc, are the first few customers.
Plans The company plans further expansion in its reach. Opening its offices in Germany and Singapore shortly, and also scouting for partners in China. Also looking at opportunities with chip manufacturers outside telecom.
Impulsesoft

www.impulsesoft.com 
Segment Embedded solutions in short-range wireless
Product Bluetooth and WLAN protocol stacks and systems
Target Users OEMs and chip manufacturers
CEO Dr K Srikrishna
India Head —
Headquarters Bangalore
India Location CA, US
Funding Pre-VC
VCs INVESTED —
Started in 1989
Opportunity With mobility being the key, short-range wireless solutions like bluetooth and 802.11 will have to complement the long-range wireless for seamless connectivity.
Solution Apart from protocol stacks in both Bluetooth and 802.11b, the interesting solution from Impulsesoft is an 802.11b PC-card based access point solution called WANDA. By licensing it, the OEM vendors can quickly build their devices, thus reducing the product design and development life-cycle. This is important in this fast emerging area.
Early Signs  Has announced its products and partnerships with National Semiconductor and SMART Modular Technologies. Other licensors include Sensitron and Kanebo. Impulsesoft also opened an office in the US. It has strategic alliances with Broadcom, Cambridge Silicon Radio, Conexant Systems, Infineon Technologies, Microsoft, RTX Telecom, Silicon Wave, US Software, and Zeevo, among others.
The Challenges The real challenge is on the standards front. As the device makers need to accept a universal standard.
Plans Plans to continue working on protocol development and with its distributors.
Infozech Software

www.infozech.com 
Segment BSS
Product Next generation billing
Target Users IP service providers
CEO Ankur Lal
India Head —
Headquarters New Delhi
India Location —
Funding $1 million (First round completed)
VCs INVESTED CDC
Started in 1992
Employees 50+ (total), 45 (India)
Opportunity According to IDC, the global opportunity in telecom billing solution is going to almost double from $5 billion in 2001 to $9.1 billion. What will account for most of that are new billing systems that does much more than billing, giving service providers the option to use it to create, manage different types of services, do settlements with content providers, and much more.
Solution Infozech’s web-based OSS product eBill is a scalable solution that offers all traditional OSS functions along with additional features like EBPP, payment verification interface, WAP billing, etc. Its scalable design can incorporate new features smoothly. The new requirements of service providers like content billing and micro payments can be easily provided by the system, that allow operators to tap new revenue streams.
Early Signs  Infozech billing system has been deployed in any market, including the US, Canada, Ireland, and the Asian markets. It has been rated as the top 40 billing vendor by Billing World. Its recent wins include a major order from a long distance global carrier and one major order in Japan.
Challenge Still to establish a strong foothold in the markets like India, China, and other developing markets in Asia. Extremely crucial as that is the growth market.
Plans What else? Working on strengthening marketing efforts in Asia-Pacific region.
Ionic Microsystems

www.ionicmicro.com 
Segment Embedded solutions
Product Residential gateways
Target Users Software to silicon vendors and OEMs
CEO G Mohan
India Head —
Headquarters Bangalore
India Location Richmond CA, USA
Funding $3 million (second round)
VCs INVESTED Global Technology Ventures and WestBridge Capital Partners and Global Technology Ventures
Started in 2000
Opportunity With broadband services becoming more pervasive on one hand, and home networking becoming popular on the other, it looks only logical that multi-functional residential gateways will replace dumb modems as the residences’ gateway to the information highway. No wonder, In-Stat MDR, the US-based tech research firm, puts the opportunity at a staggering $5 billion by 2006, up from just about $125 million in 2001.
Solution Ionic Mico has built a reference design kit for developing access point products and solutions. It has a hardware design reference, and a software consisting of several protocol stacks, drivers and applications, aimed at giving the box manufacturers and the silicon vendors a portable and modular solution.
Early Signs  Ionic Micro has entered into an agreement with Conexant Systems to develop products built around Conexant’s CX82100 Home Networking Processor line. The first product was a Bluetooth Access Point, which allows Bluetooth devices to access the Internet via a broadband connection, such as a cable modem or DSL modem.
Plans Ionic Micro hopes to license the design and then get a royalty for each piece sold. In addition to selling its reference design to OEMs, it will approach chip manufacturers also.
iPDialog

www.ipdialog.com 
Segment Customer premise equipment
Product SIP phone
Target Users Users (through service providers)
CEO Hardish Singh
India Head Rajnish Batta
Headquarters San Jose, CA, US
India Location NCR (Gurgaon)
Funding NA
VCs INVESTED NA
Started in 1999
Opportunity There is a move towards converged enterprise and carrier networks that will carry voice and data, and will be data-centric. The users, however, are not ready to compromise on the simplicity and rich features of the plain old telephones.
Solution Feature-rich, easy-to-use phones that would run on data networks. That is what IPDialog makes. Its SIPPhone Ethernet phone has all the features like CLI, speakerphone, volume control, ringer level control, redial, speed dial from phonebook, call hold, call waiting, call forwarding, call transfer...everything.
Early Signs  Introduced the phone in April at the VON conference at a very competitive price of $150 per phone.
Challenge The technology still has few takers. It may be a long time before it becomes a volume market.
Plans In the first phase, targeting service providers and system integrators to bundle with their services.
ipGen Inc.

www.ipgen.com 
Segment Service creation
Product Softswitch
Target Users Service providers (carriers as well as the ASPs)
CEO Paul Pandian
India Head NK Vasantharaja
Headquarters Richardson, Texas, USA
India Location Bangalore and Chennai
Funding Subsidiary of Axes Technologies
VCs INVESTED —
Started in 1999
Employees 125 (total), 100 (India)
Opportunity Open system architecture for next-generation wireless and wireline networks based on IP technology with the softswitch as the key control element along with application creation tools are seen as the next thing. The new technologies constitute a radical shift away from this model and cleanly separate call control and media handling functions, allowing them to communicate over IP and ATM packet networks. New service features located anywhere on an IP network, freeing the service provider from dependence on the telco for enhancements would be another thing.
Solution ipGen’s softswitch has been designed for the multi-protocol networks and can simultaneously mediate in real-time between protocols like SS7, MEGACO, MGCP, H.323 and SIP. Softswitch can run a complete suite of carrier grade long distance, Class 4, applications that enable voice transport over packet networks, including advanced routing, SS7 interoperability, free phone services (1-800), etc. An open applications programming interface (API) is provided with support for industry standard APIs.
Early Signs  An early release of the product was demonstrated at the Spring VON show at Phoenix. Is talking to possible prospects in SE Asia, India, and the US. The initial release of the softswitch for wireline networks has been completed.
Challenge The current traditional providers may not look at upgrading. Convincing the SPs of moving media is not easy.
Plans The company’s strategy is to focus on a few core areas of network applications and seek out partners who can use the API to deliver enhancements, such as IP Centrex, voice portals, call center functionality, etc.
ipolicy Networks

www.ipolicynet.com 
Segment Service creation
Product Security enabling and enforcement of software at the edge
Target Users Service providers
CEO Vimal Vaidya
India Head Rajeev Goel
Headquarters Fremont, CA, US
India Location NCR (Noida)
Funding NA
VCs INVESTED Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures
Started in 1992
Opportunity That security is the single-most important inhibitor to do business on the Net by organizations is no secret. However, no business today can afford to remain isolated from Internet. Most business organizations end up implementing security solutions at their end. These implementations require substantial ongoing consulting, training, and maintenance costs, and are often not scalable and manageable. Security itself, then, could turn out to be one of the biggest value-added services by the service provider.
Solution A lot of service providers in competitive markets have responded to the need by taking the responsibility of security. But that is often restricted to deploying the security solutions at customer’s place and managing them, where the overheads are high and anyway, that is not what a network service providers’ business is. What they need is a network-based approach. That is what iPenforcer system of ipolicy Networks provides. It provides a security enforcement solution that has been designed for a service provider network, operating at Gigabit (latest is OC48) speeds.
Early Signs  Has forged a number of partnerships with specialist companies like Elron Software, Network Associates, and Symentec.
Challenge The carrier capex spending is still tight. And then, there is a challenge from the box vendors who are big names and push their security solutions.
Plans To keep the partnership drive on.
Ishoni Networks

www.ishoni.com 
Segment Semiconductor
Product Integrated access devices and broadband gateway chips
Target Users Broadband CPE manufacturers
CEO Prakash Bhalerao
India Head Dr Vivek Mansingh
Headquarters Santa Clara, California, US
India Location Bangalore
Funding $68 million through three financing rounds and $25 million through equity participation from Royal Philips Electronics
VCs INVESTED Bessemer Venture Partners, Brad Peery Capital, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Banc Alex Brown, Information Technology Ventures, INVESCO Private Capital, Lucent Venture Partners, meVC Draper Fisher Jurvetson, PacRim Venture Partners, SinoStar Capital, Royal Philips Electronics and Western Technologies
Started in 1998
Employees 180 (total), 110 (India)
Opportunity As broadband services become more pervasive, service providers will change their current customer premise equipment (CPE) strategies from a ‘modem-only’ termination to the one where service gateways are shipped to subscribers, enabling advanced service packages, including data, voice, home control and entertainment services that are distributed over the home network, says In-Stat/MDR. This will result in, according to the tech research firm, a $5 billion residential gateway market by 2006, up from just about $125 million in 2001.
Solution Ishoni will allow CPE manufacturers to make these devices using its single gateway-on-a-chip platform and core software. What’s more, it’s WAN-independent.
Early Signs  Has built partnerships with several VoB vendors like Accton, Accelerated, Alcatel, Centillium, Conexant, Copper Mountain, CopperCom, General Bandwidth, GlobeSpan, Infineon, Jetstream, MetaSwitch, Tollbridge, and Wind River.
Challenge Unified standards need to emerge
Plans Royal Philips Electronics acquired a 51 percent majority interest in Ishoni Networks. The Philips investment will be for joint product development, joint sales and marketing activities, and manufacturing.
Ittiam Systems

www.iitiam.com 
Segment Embedded solutions
Product Codecs, LANs, modems
Target Users Device and chip makers
CEO Srini Rajam
India Head —
Headquarters Bangalore
India Location US, UK
Funding $5 million (First round complete)
VCs INVESTED Global Technology Ventures
Started in 2001
Employees 75 (total)
Opportunity Video-imaging and audio-speech products along with wireless and wireline products in communication is a big bet. That can be achieved through the DSP and systems architecture.
Solution MuV product suite is the multimedia portfolio. These video and audio-speech compression and decompression components are compliant with the MPEG 4 standard and include simple visual profile, advanced simple visual profile and streaming video profile running on multiple DSP platforms. Voice band modems targeted at embedded applications and can be plugged into larger systems, fixed or mobile. Soft cores for IEEE 802.11b and 802.11a wireless LAN PHYs. Solutions for 802.11b standard which has a bandwidth of 11 Mbps and OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) based 802.11a that has a bandwidth of 54 Mbps. Its WLAN offering includes 802.11 MAC and simulators for system designers along with a reference board.
Early Signs  Announced MV suite of products, the wireless range of products. Opened offices and set up associates.
Challenge With a lot of IP products that would be available quickly, building partnerships and enabling the device makers to innovate will be the real challenge.
Plans The company is looking at expanding its market focus for to South Korea and Greater China, besides the US, Japanese and European markets. Build a mixed portfolio for both limited frequency and high-end applications.
Jataayu

www.jataayusoft.com 
Segment Mobile applications
Product Softswitch based MSC
Target Users Mobile switch providers and CPE makers
CEO Mahesh Kumar Jain
India Head —
Headquarters Bangalore
India Location —
Funding —
VCs INVESTED Wholly-owned subsidiary of Integra Micro Systems
Started in 2000
Employees 125
Opportunity Mobile communication has reached the mass market. WAP is being seen as a single global standard for taking Internet content and value-added services into wireless networks and devices.
Solution Jataayu has a range of server and client product offerings catering to the entire spectrum of wireless data. Has products like WAP gateways and also various WAP browsers for handhelds too.
Early Signs  One of the first few to come out with WAP gateways on multiple platforms and WAP browsers for Palm OS, globally. Won contract from various players. Announced joint product development. Opened offices in the US and UK subsidiary.
Challenge The bad news now. WAP started off in a big way but the hype has died down and the realty sets in and wireless data would be sought if killer apps are designed. Also, the operators have to find data as a revenue-generating stream.
Plans To establish itself as a wireless Internet company. It is working in complementary and emerging technologies like Bluetooth, SMS, SIM Toolkit, VoIP, Voice XML, SyncML, MMS and 3G.
July Systems

www.julysystems.com 
Segment Mobile data services
Product Mobile network infrastructure platform
Target Users Mobile operators
CEO Ashok Narasimhan
India Head Rajesh TS Reddy
Headquarters Sunnyvale, CA, USA
India Location Bangalore
Funding $8 million (First round completed)
VCs INVESTED Neocarta Ventures, Westbridge Capital Partners, Acer Technology Ventures, and Jumpstartup Venture Fund
Started in 2001
Employees 50 (total), 40 (India)
Opportunity   With mobile operators across the globe turning to data services for remaining competitive, there is a lot of confusion regarding what type of devices will succeed, what technologies will be the winner, what standards would prevail, whether WLAN would kill 3G and so on. The consensus that is emerging, of late, is that it will not be an either-or but a mix-n-match. And someone has to make that possible.
Solution July Systems, broadly is aiming to do that. It is promising what it calls a wireless superstructure that will intelligently unify devices, applications and networks, across technologies. It will help operators—mobile operators, ISPs, and pure-play WLAN operators—to create, deploy and manage customized high-value mobile data services over packet data networks, such as GPRS, 3G, and WLAN for both enterprises and consumers.
Early Signs  Has been talking and testing with some mobile operators and expects the testing to be completed by the middle of first quarter of 2003, and the product commercially available then.
Challenge Creating the technology is the easier part. The tough part is to convince so many different operators, having different business models and coming from different backgrounds to be a part of the superstructure. Also, as things are unfolding, Asia and Europe are leading the mobile wave. July’s strength is America.
Plans Products to be commercially available around Q1 of 2003. Scouting for more partners. Double manpower by April 2003. Establish offices in key markets in the Asian region.
Lifetree Convergence

www.lifetreeindia.com 
Segment OSS, mobile applications
Product Billing, service creation platform, applications
Target Users All service providers, with thrust on mobile service providers
CEO Atul Chopra
India Head —
Headquarters New Delhi
India Location —
Funding —
VCs INVESTED —
Employees 94 (total), 54 (India)
Opportunity The fierce competition in mobile services means the operators have to protect their margins either by having new revenue sources or by utilizing their resources more efficiently.
Solution Lifetree offers solutions across all major OSS/BSS areas and applications for the mobile service providers market. It includes a convergent billing and customer-care software called @bility, a self-provisioning system called Zipcare, an electronic bill presentment system called Zipbill, a content-billing and settlement software called Ziprate, a mobile service creation platform called MDX, and a micro-payment solution called M-oney, for the service providers.
Early Signs  Already has installations in major Asian markets with customers, such as Sunday (Hong Kong), Shell Mobile (Hong Kong), Spice Telecom, Hutchison and Bharti Cellular (India). It has also got a foothold in Europe by deploying its EBPP for Blue spA, Italy. Seems all geared up for a new growth phase.
Challenge The mobile applications space is getting crowded. And Lifetree’s client base is thinly distributed globally. Could face marketing challenges, unless it builds effective alliances globally.
Plans To strengthen its India focus and work with alliances in major markets.
Mistral Software

www.mistralsoftware.com 
Segment Embedded software
Product VoIP gateway
Target Users Service providers, equipment companies
CEO Anees Ahmed
India Head —
Headquarters Bangalore
India Location US, UK, and Japan
Funding $3 million (first round)
VCs INVESTED e-TEC Ventures
Started in 1997
Employees 160 (total), 140 (India)
Opportunity Low cost, flexible softswitch is now a viable option for service provider.
Solution Mistral has a VoIP switch that can be used as a media gateway and VoIP PBX, with additional functionalities. The VoIP PBX supports H.323 and SIP protocols. It also has protocol stacks for mobile IP protocol, designed to address the problem of keeping network connectivity alive even when the end node roams or switches to another network, and for communication between the hosts and the routers.
Early Signs  Has made significant inroads on the protocol development front. Partnered with embedded solutions providers like WindRiver, Analog Devices, DENON, Force Computers and e3Global. Set up offices in key regions like the US, UK, and Japan.
Challenge To market the products as own products and not deviate by taking the easier OEM route.
Plans Looking at the big Asian markets, including India.
Peak XV Networks

www.peakxv.net 
Segment Professional service
Product —
Target Users Service providers
CEO Paul Stich
India Head HN Deepak
Headquarters San Ramon, CA, US
India Location Bangalore
Funding $21 million
VCs INVESTED Doll Capital Management, Oak Investment Partners, e4e Ventures
Started in 1999
Employees 150 (total), 100 (India)
Opportunity With multiple vendors, technologies, and standards, the service provider networks are becoming more heterogeneous. And most vendors, who are excellent single-product companies do not have the bandwidth for integration. So the service provider either has to do the integration himself or has to compromise in product quality, not being able to take the best-of-breed in every product. The network manager of an operator is facing a problem that his enterprise counterpart faced a decade ago. The solution: taking a cue from the enterprise space. Hire vendor-independent professional service providers.
Solution Peak XV tries to do just that. As an independent professional service provider, it does multiple technologies integration for the service provider. Yet, it works closely with major vendors like Cisco, Nortel, Juniper, Redback, and Foundry, to gain knowledge on technologies and products. India serves both as a manpower resource center and also as a technology center where it standardizes collective knowledge and works on new areas like core routing and switching, VPN, security, content caching, VoIP, wireless, and network operation centers.
Early Signs  Qwest, Nextel, SBC, Teleglobe...it has done it for all. Now, doing managed service for service providers and large enterprises as well.
Challenge The equipment market is tough. And so is the integration market. Also, its focus has primarily been on America. It has to quickly target the high growth markets like India, China, and South East Asia.
Plans In the short run, going all out with managed network services where dollars are still flowing in. It will also help it in learning better. Also trying to look at Asian markets.
Phonologies

www.phonologies.com 
Segment Applications
Product VoIP gateway and voice based messaging and information delivery applications
Target Users All service providers
CEO Prashant Lamba
India Head —
Headquarters Mumbai
India Location —
Funding Pre-funding
VCs INVESTED —
Started in June 2001
Opportunity Voice is still the king, especially in the bright spots of global telecom—India and China. Service providers can deliver a lot of information services over voice—call it data over voice—and may make money by bundling them with voice services.
Solution The company, having expertise in voice processing, is positioning as a telecom service provider. It has its own VoIP gateway to provide a bundled solution. Applications include information over telephone and voice messaging.
Early Signs  Is still fairly new.
Challenge The market is tough, considering the fact that in the Asian markets where it has a potential, the reluctance to speak to/listen to a machine is high. Service providers should also see a tangible revenue stream. 
SunTec

www.suntecgroup.com 
Segment OSS/BSS
Product Customer care & billing, mediation
Target Users Service providers
CEO K Nandakumar
India Head —
Headquarters Thiruvanantapuram
India Location UK, US, Germany, Singapore, Holland
Funding $6 million
VCs INVESTED Schroders Capital Partners
Started in 1990
Employees 300+
Opportunity According to IDC, the global opportunity in telecom billing solution is going to almost double from $5 billion in 2001 to $9.1 billion.
Solution SunTec provides billing, customer-care solutions to the telecom service providers.
Early Signs  SunTec has been a silent performer in the billing and customer-care space. Apart from deploying at BSNL, and HFCL Infotel in India, SunTec, today, has customers in Europe and Asia. And many of them are big names, like Belgacom of Belgium, KPN of the Netherlands, Elisanet and Finnish Telecom of Finland, Deutsche Telekom of Germany,
and STW of Malaysia.
Challenge To keep the growth growing and penetrate more into the Asian markets, including the growing home market—India.
Plans Strengthening support centers, focusing more on indian markets, and developing Asia-Pacific business development.
Tejas Networks

www.tejasnetworks.com 
Segment Optical Networking
Product SDH Multiplexers
Target Users Service providers
CEO Sanjay Nayak
India Head —
Headquarters Bangalore
India Location US and Singapore subsidiaries
Funding $11.6 million (2nd round complete)
VCs INVESTED IL&FS Venture Corporation (IVC), Intel Capital, Dr Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande, Sycamore Networks, ASG Omni LLC (USA)
Started in 2000
Employees 105 (total)
Opportunity Intelligent optical networking is the way to offer bandwidth utilization.
Solution Tejas enables in bringing the intelligence of routing to the optical domain, especially the edge products. The TJ100 family is a SDH Multiplexer equipment (STM-1/4) designed to manage bandwidth and derive services from the optical core to access. While the core is the good-old SDH, access could be provided with 10/100 Mbps Ethernet or DSL/ATM.
Early Signs  Developed the TJ100 family of products and deployed the first offering at Tata DWDM network. Won orders from RailNet in India and also bagged first global order from a Chinese operator. Set-up subsidiaries in the US and Singapore.
Challenge The biggest challenge is the long buying cycles. Typically, it is two years in the US.
Plans Focused on selling TJ100 to carriers in India and other emerging markets in Asia. Establishing partnerships with strong system integrators for selling its products in the overseas markets. And expanding the TJ100 family of products for STM-16. Not closed to OEM deals. Looking at tying up with integrators to access African and Middle East markets.
UshaComm

www.ushacomm.com 
Segment OSS/BSS
Product Billing, mediation, business intelligence
Target Users Service providers
CEO Prashant Jhawar
India Head —
Headquarters Reston, VA, US
India Location Kolkata
Funding $8 million
VCs INVESTED Carlyle Group
Started in 1999
Employees 507 (total), 457 (India)
Opportunity According to IDC, the global opportunity in telecom billing solution is going to almost double from $5 billion in 2001 to $9.1 billion. This will also be accompanied by a growth in professional services around it.
Solution UshaComm provides billing, mediation, and service management solution for all types of operators, including mobile service providers, fixed service providers, cable and broadband service providers, and IP service providers.
Early Signs  Spun off as a separate company in 1999, with headquarters in the US, UshaComm existed under the name UBEST as a division of Usha Martin Industries. It is one of the few companies, which has taken this route. It has a presence in almost 40 markets, including a presence across all continents. Customers are in Africa, India, central Asia, Americas and Western Europe. Its major strength has traditionally been in wireless and most deployments are in GSM.
Challenge To get into the big league, having successfully established itself as a company to reckon with. Also, more focus needed on Southeast Asia and India where high-value products may be deployed.
Plans It is betting a lot on the high-value business intelligence solutions for service providers that will help the latter to analyze customer data and usage pattern to take business decisions.
WDC Solutions

www.wdcsolutions.com 
Segment Mobile applications & wireless technologies
Product SMS server bundled with content partnerships
Target Users Service providers
CEO Manju S Murthy
India Head —
Headquarters Bangalore
India Location —
Funding Pre-funding
VCs INVESTED —
Started in   2000
Opportunity Content is king. With competition getting intense and technology being available, more operators are now looking at content provision as a new source of revenue to keep a check on falling ARPU. But content partnerships are a business by itself !
Solution WDC Solutions is one of the few companies which not only has a good portfolio of mobile applications, but understands the problem well. On one hand, it is selling the concept of mobile enterprise to user organizations; on the other hand, it is forging partnerships with original content providers. Thus, it is making the job of the mobile operator easier. And of course, it provides its server called MobiPro Operator to operators, which allows them to remotely manage the MDS infrastructure using SNMP. The company is also in areas like Bluetooth and 802.11b.
Early Signs  Has already signed two operators in India for its SMS-based content services. WDC has also deployed solutions in Malaysia and is conducting a trial in Singapore.
Challenge Uncharted waters. The rules in mobile content games are yet to be finalized.
Plans To focus on India and SE Asia. The company is also working on similar solutions for the CDMA wireless world.
Winphoria Networks

www.winphoria.com 
Segment Wireless infrastructure
Product Softswitch based MSC
Target Users Mobile service providers
CEO Mike Champa
India Head Dr M Giridhar Krishna
Headquarters Tewksbury, MA, US
India Location Bangalore
Funding $ 50 million (2nd round complete)
VCs INVESTED Matrix Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Amerindo Investment Advisors Inc
Started in March 2000
Employees 125 (total), 45 (India)
Opportunity The mobile operators, today, use the class 5 voice switches that were not designed keeping their needs in mind. So far, they have worked. But why to settle for less when you can do it better, and more importantly at a fraction of the cost?
Solution Winphoria decided to offer both the advantages in its solution—better handling of mobile calls and cost-effectiveness. Its next-generation MSC that is a LINUX-based softswitch. It will be smoothly scalable, and cost less to buy and maintain. Some of the mobile-to-mobile calls will be handled in such a way that they will not require voice encoding and decoding each time. What is more important, a service provider can just add new MSCs to its networks, without disrupting the legacy infrastructure.
Early Signs  Motorola, which has so far competed as a pure RF company, has signed an OEM deal with Winphoria to offer the latter’s MSC as part of an end-to-end mobile infrastructure solution. However, that is not exclusive.
Challenge Winphoria’s solution is only for CDMA wireless technology. That means most part of the mobile world would not have access to this solution.
Plans Developing a GSM MSC. In the short run, it also wants to make some bucks from selling an application called ‘Push to talk’, wherein mobile users can have closed-user-group walkie-talkie like conversations. Two top mobile SPs in the US have already signed for this.
Wisor Telecom

www.wisor.com 
Segment OSS
Product Service management suite
Target Users Service provider
CEO Mark Mendes
India Head MN Nayak
Headquarters Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA
India Location Bangalore
Funding $ 18 million (2nd round complete)
VCs INVESTED Boston Ventures, Early Stage Enterprises LP, Hickory Venture Group, Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds, Keystone, Maryland, SAIC Venture Capital Corp., RIGGS, TDF Telecommunications Development Fund, and Megunticook
Started in 1997
Employees 80 (total), 50 (India)
Opportunity With complex networks and advanced/converged services becoming the norm, the need for service management solutions capable of addressing on-net and off-net architectures is the need of the hour.
Solution The service management solution for communication carriers from Wisor provides flow-through provisioning regardless of service type, domain, or network topology. Included in the solution is a pre-integrated interconnection gateway that permits interconnection with the carriers’ enterprise customers as well as interconnection with the carriers’ back office systems via an XML API. The flexibility of the system is built around the concept of user-definable objects (UDO), which allows end-users to build product/technology specific parameters or attributes that may not be incorporated in generic knowledge templates.
Early Signs  Has won orders from BellSouth, Verizon, University of Oklahoma, etc. But needs to make a break in the Asia-Pacific region.
Challenge Since its product is towards efficiency management, most part of the Asian markets have yet to move towards this kind of a solution. In India, the operators are still in the phase of network building and optimization stage.
Plans Obviously, to get a break in the Indian market, so that entering the other Asian markets becomes easier. The company has tied up with several well-known integrators like Wipro, ITI, and HSS, and is already in talks with several operators. On the product front, it is coming up with country-specific products suiting the needs of the operators there. Also looking at getting the quality certifications in place for the company.
Zintec

www.zintec.com 
Segment DSP/embedded solution
Product Embedded solutions for CPE
Target Users CPE device makers
CEO Chris de Zong
India Head Yogesh Shyam Maurya
Headquarters Reeuwijk, Holland
India Location Hyderabad
Funding Pre-funding
VCs INVESTED —
Started in 2000
Employees 50
Opportunity The new services that combine traditional functionalities of television with other content-rich applications through the use of broadband networks/Internet could only be possible with proper customer premise devices.
Solution Zintec’s solution includes embedded systems for TV set-top boxes, conditional access systems, multimedia home platform, ISDN, etc.
Early Signs  The company has entered into a partnership agreement with Texas Instruments.
Challenge There is a big crowd in this area now. Marketing globally is a challenge.




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