Tibco Software is a leading player in infrastructure and business intelligence software covering analytics, cloud, social media and mobility. It was founded by Vivek Ranadive, a well-known entrepreneur of Indian origin in the Silicon Valley. His $1.5 billion, Palo Alto, California-based venture has a significant presence in India and looking to further expand its business. Out of Tibco?s 4,000-plus staff worldwide, 1,200-plus are based here. Tibco?s core R&D and high technology support is run out of the India facilities. A large number of Tibco?s global customers are serviced from India. They are also going to open another facility in the country very soon. The global head of operations Murat Sonmez shared details related to the strategy, operations and future plans of the company in an interaction with Monalisa Sen. Excerpts:
Globally as well as in India, the mobile and internet user base has grown tremendously. People are creating and consuming data with increased ferocity. Against this, where do you see these technologies headed over the next two years down the line?
The amount of data will increase dramatically. You have already seen that. As the amount of information is increasing exponentially, time value of that information is shrinking. And time to respond to that is shrinking too. So there is an inverse reaction as the volume of data grows. Time to respond, time value is shrinking. Being able to look at what is happening and taking action, is becoming more and more critical and you will have mobiles generating information.
Established companies are trying to make sense out of these vast amounts of data and utilise that to better service their customers or maximise their operational efficiencies. India is the biggest democracy on the planet and information availability democratises everything.
Where does your firm?s innovation, approach and strategy come into play?
Innovation approach comes from having the smartest kids on the planet. So we just hire the smartest kids on the planet. For them everything is possible. So wherever it is, and we have an extensive college recruitment process here in India. Your educational institutions are worldwide well-known. Just want to hire the young kids, and give them, put them on the impossible projects, and say look we have a customer. We hire the smartest kids on the planet and also encourage them to fail. Because we don?t want to punish people if they fail. Because that?s when you try new ideas.
So the innovation is coming from hiring the smartest kids on the planet, putting them in very challenging projects, allowing them to innovate, and removing the fear of failure. But giving them very little resources. If you are resource constrained, credibility comes in. And that?s how we innovate. We also have an internal platform, our social network that allows us to share experiences, regardless of who your title is and what you are. In fact the higher your title, the less you know. Because you?re removed from reality. So we basically share information internally.
Where?s the cloud moving now?
From a business model perspective it makes complete sense because the 20th century companies will have you spend billions of dollars to install things, and it takes months and years to make it happen. With cloud you get into a consumption model. You pay as you go. You do not pay for upgrades. You do not need hundreds of consultants. So it actually goes against the benefits of interests of the established companies. But it?s happening, we?ve already seen it take off. It is easy to consume. But the challenge in India is access, network access. So to use the cloud you have to have access to the internet. And if you don?t have the access infrastructure, the cloud will remain high in the sky. So I think India needs to really address the accessibility issue for the cloud to really take off as we have seen in other parts of the world.
What are the broad focus of activities for Tibco in India?
If you look at the shifts in the world, the social and mobility, big data are facts. But we also see re-balancing of the economies between India and China taking the forefront. They are no longer emerging markets. India has limitless opportunities because they have a young generation, mobile platforms are here, those who get college degrees out here are very well educated. So we see as a big opportunity for Tibco. It could be hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for us over a time period. Our presence in India is started with off shore and engineering. So we started hiring the smart kids. We also started hiring consultants out of India and we now have 50 people in Singapore out of India, working on major banking implementation.
The other point I wanted to add to our relevance in India is, Tibco has always been about scale, massive amounts of data, massive amounts of information moving in real time, and this country is all about scale. The telecom industry is a major focus for us. We get about 22% of our revenue from that industry. When we speak to a telecom in Hong Kong or Singapore, their total subscriber base is maybe two million or three million. When we speak to a telecom provider here, we are talking about 100 million, 200 million. So the order of magnitude is very different. So in that sense we feel we are very relevant for this market.
What kind of R&D work is done out of Tibco in India?
Our Indian engineering operations are an integral part of our global involvement. It?s not just doing the mundane work but we really do some ground breaking engineering work out of India. It?s an integral part of our organisation. In terms of the number of engineers in a country, India by far has the highest number of engineers out of any country, including the United States. About one-third of our engineers are probably in India. We will continue to invest and India has some very smart, hardworking kids coming out of universities and we want to tap into that.