 "Foreign
companies join hands with Indian Companies for the competence
and expertise that Indian companies have built over the years"
- Deepak Nakra, MD, iCOPE Technologies
The city-based iCOPE Technologies' Managing Director,
Deepak Nakra, spoke to Bangalorebest.com about the company's
expertise in the domain of telecommunications & unified messaging,
Internet applications and other software services.
·Why have so many foreign companies come forward to collaborate
with Indian software companies? How has been your alliance with
a German company earlier?
They join with Indian companies for the competitiveness that
Indian software companies have. They tie-up to make the most
of Indian companies' tremendous resource and the expertise that
they have built up over the years, which obviously has a great
demand all over. While some foreign companies start up as joint
ventures with Indian companies, some others take over Indian
companies by sub-contracting some projects or by buying Indian
companies' products.
We'd been associated with a German company for over six years.
Then we decided to separate to build on our own market infrastructure
in our areas of expertise. We have a large clientele from across
the globe, besides our earlier German partner, who is still
our customer.
·Now a days, there is a growing trend of implementing non-hierarchal
and non-bureaucratic organizational structure (n-h and n-b).
iCOPE has also implemented this. Could you elaborate on this?
We take full responsibility on projects from our customers,
for which creativity plays a vital role. Companies are realizing
that traditional organizational structures deter creativity.
This 'n-h and n-b' enables employees to work as a team with
openness that matters a lot in imparting creativity.
·Tell us about the activities of iCOPE in Bangalore.
Our Bangalore office works as an offshore model offering
software solutions to different clients abroad. We take
responsibility tasks from our clients and execute them right
here completely. Our engineers sometimes travel to the clients'
place for software integration. This kind of travel by employees
specifically helps our company a lot, unlike others who allow
their employees to work on the customer's place for onsite projects
that benefit only the employees.
 ·How
does iCOPE provide solutions to customers playing in different
fields like publishing houses, Internet banking products, telephony,
health care and others?
There is a common aspect in all of them and that lies in our
core competency - telecom and messaging. When we extend this
to specialized applications like fax, voice and emails, we call
it unified messaging. The same is leveraged to e-banking applications,
which again is based on our core competency of messaging. We
take that part of banking that is related to communication,
which can link a bank to a customer or another bank or the end
user. Similarly, we are working in the mobile banking sector
as well.
·How does messaging interface and GroupWare help customers?
Messaging is a general framework available for transfer of information
in a store and forward mode. This type of messaging component
is used for transferring faxes or voice-mails and is called
unified messaging. But when the same is used for normal workflow
applications, through both intra and Internet, it is called
GroupWare.
·How is your i-Voice unique?
Through i-Voice, people can send messages to any person in the
world, by typing in the phone/cell phone number (landlines should
not be connected to EPABX) of the person on the receiving end
in the specified box on the web site. There are instructions
indicated in five different user-friendly languages to ease
the process of receiving messages. By just selecting a particular
city (indicated in the pull down menu) and without having to
mention the STD/ISD codes, one can easily send voice messages
across borders or cities.
This helps mobile phone operators to offer specialised services
acting as a Unique Selling Point (USP). We also have a licensing
model for other corporate customers who want to make use of
this i-Voice for linking it to other applications; many portals
are showing interest in this model.
Right now, we have joined hands with Airtel, the mobile phone
service providers for sending and receiving messages based on
i-Voice in Karnataka. We are coming out with similar services
in Andhra Pradesh and Delhi in the coming months. We are also
looking out to tie-up with other mobile phone service providers
aggressively in India to offer our services in other parts of
the country.
 ·When
will mobile banking really take off in India?
It will catch up fast, though the platforms and standardizations
relating to them may vary. These days, we are seeing the growth
of mobile network and mobile phone usage much faster than the
Internet.
·What is your expansion plan in the domain of your core competence?
Now we have got venture funding for our future expansion. We
are placed in a very good position in the domain of our expertise
and I foresee this area as the fastest growing area. There is
also an indication that market size is not going to be limited.
At the same time, we intend to build related applications in
e-commerce, mobile banking, e-business and other e-banking areas.
Already, iCOPE is well established in Germany and other German
speaking countries. We are also looking at the European and
US markets. Telematics, telecom and messaging are going to be
very interesting areas in the future and we are sure to tap
the market to the fullest potential.
More on Deepak Nakra
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7:42:24 AM 
