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BUSINESS INDIA :
May 13-26, 2002
R. Karthik is obviously an entrepreneur who believes in himself. Over
the last couple of months the 30-year-old chairman and managing director
of Chennai based eonour technologies ltd (ETL) has bought 2.4 million
of his company's shares, raising his personal stake to 75 per cent. "I
wanted to consolidate my holdings at the current prices, which I believe
are low," he explains. The scrip has been hovering around the Rs10 mark
on the Bombay StockExchange (BSE) five times the face value of Rs2 to
which it was reduced after a split in December 2001.
ETL is in its third guise since Karthik bought over Indore-based Mikugura
Software Ltd under BIFR rules and took it to Chennai as eonour software
ltd in 2000. The then Rs10 shares, offered at a premium of Rs20 each,
opened at Rs560 on BSE during the height of the software boom. It justified
the market's optimism by multiplying its revenues nearly eight times to
Rs9.51 crore in March-June 2000 from the Rs1.2 crore achieved in 1Q1999-2000,
and its net profit (NP) over 23 times from Rs15.57 lakh to Rs3.62 crore.
It ended the year with a Rs15.2-crore NP and sales of Rs47.37 crore, quadrupling
the previous year's figures.
In the second quarter of 2001-2 it renamed itself again, to reflect what
Karthik calls its transformation from "just an IT solutions provider to
a supplier of technology solutions" with its entries into embedded systems
and bio informatics. "We see ourselves over the next five years and beyond
as a technology provider to a large gamut of industries," he says.
ETL provides solutions in the areas of enterprise application integration
(EAI) and supply chain management (SCM). The concentration on SCM, Karthik
explains, is in response to the recession: to retain customers by offering
added-value products that offer greater returns on investment. In January,
the company bagged two project orders from Hyundai Motors India Ltd, addressing
the carmaker's Web-based requirements in SCM and the sharing of trainee
information among its various branches. "The major companies are still
investing in SCM in a recession, streamlining of purchases and distribution
saves them huge costs," he points out.
In 2001-2 ETL chalked up a turnover of Rs65.46 crore, up only 38.18 per
cent as against Karthik's confident projection last year of "conservative"
growth of 55 per cent year on year. Blame the economic slowdown and 11
September 2001, he says: they took infotech budgets behind by six months.
"We have grown in spite of the recession because of our focus on SCM solutions,
which has contributed to a majority of our revenue streams," he says.
Southeast Asia being a manufacturing hub, a lot of opportunities have
opened up in this field."
Karthik identifies partnerships as another key to ETL'S growth. The company,
he points out, has been targeting new markets through strategic alliances
that involve cross-selling and outsourcing. "The company is able to offer
total one-source solutions by virtue of these partnerships," he says.
Partners include Euro-Rsco for online branding and Web communication solutions,
and Acer India for Web servers and other hardware, in a tripartite tie-up
where ETL provides B2B (business-to-business) solutions, especially e-security.
Alliances are the way to go, confirms Acer India managing director W.S.
Mukund: different organisations have their own core strengths, each by
itself probably not enough to give service to the end customer. "This
three-way alliance fits in well with our strategy of concentrating on
SMES (small and medium enterprises) it's a win-win situation for everyone,"
he says.
Tie-ups with the University of Pune and Jaipur's Biria Institute of Scientific
Research will power ETL'S drive into bioinformatics, where it plans to
bring out a product within a year.
Minding his P's and Q's, Karthik declares that quality is an "imperative".
Having got its iso 9001 certification in 2001, the company is now working
on achieving SEI-CMM level 4 by end of the current financial year.
Along the way ETL has also developed a couple of special-application products:
Eonx, a package for online trading it has installed at the Indore Stock
Exchange, and Fleet Management System (FMS), a Web-based solution that
helps fleet operators optimise their operations by automating and managing
work processes including vehicle inventory and maintenance, shipment schedules
and deliveries, trip bill generation, and human resource management.
"We are very happy with the functioning of the e-procurement product implemented
at our organisation last year," says Ye Qiqing, general manager of China's
Guangdong Electronics Group. "It is very user-friendly, and has started
positively impacting upon the purchase cycle. Some of our suppliers have
also mentioned that the Web-based procurement process has helped them
in speeding up the supply process."
Karthik has the road ahead clearly mapped out.
For further details please contact:info@eonour.com
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