Knowing fully well that nothing much can grow in the shade of a banyan tree, Escosoft sought to thrive on its own—and succeeded, says Shipra Arora

Escosoft Technologies, the wholly-owned subsidiary of the Escorts Group, might not be a part of the big league in India Software Inc, but the company has still been able to create a niche for itself within the highly competitive market.

It has emerged as a significant player in the animation and gaming segment. Even while increasing its focus on this relatively new area—which is expected to contribute a major share of its earnings in the future—it has been able to maintain its image as a mainstay IT software and services company with operations in areas like enterprise software solutions and services, and telecom convergence and facilities management. In fact, the company covers the entire spectrum of IT services from proprietary software product development to marketing and implementation of software products. Learning the ropes of the game all the time, Escosoft is now in the process of understanding the dynamics of the industry and figuring out what it takes to reach the top.

According to A D Mehta, CEO, Escosoft, the management made a conscious decision right at the beginning to not restrict itself to catering to the parent company’s requirements; it just didn’t want to make itself an in-house IT set-up. Happily, it has been able to maintain its strategy ever since the launch of operations in mid-1999; at present, only about 10-15 percent of its business comes from the Escorts Group. “Concentration on the parent company involves the risk of becoming complacent and losing out on customer focus, professionalism and regular upgradation of technology,” Mehta points out.

The company has been following a two-pronged approach: developing in-house competencies as well as building competencies through the alliances route. Escosoft formed two key alliances during its early days. The first was a reseller alliance with Computer Associates for their products in India. In order to gain expertise on the enterprise applications front, Escosoft then entered into a partnership with the Sweden-based enterprise application company, IFS, for selling and implementing IFS applications in India. Initiating the alliance as a reseller in June 2000, the company went on to become IFS’s distributor in 2001, and also set up a competency centre for IFS, which presently houses 50 people.

Simultaneously, Escosoft has been building up its own skills in the area of custom-developed applications. Having identified the domains to focus on—including manufacturing, telecom and healthcare—the company decided to build skills in these segments and enhance value addition.

Games & animation group
Escosoft has outlined plans for a major focus on its games and animation division. Accounting for almost 20 percent of the company’s revenues in the first year of its operations, the segment is targeted to grow to almost 40 percent of total business by 2003. Escosoft also plans to increase manpower strength in its animation division from the present 200 people to around 300-400 in the next one-and-half year.

The animation group has set up an animation service studio, Escotoonz, which provides services like 2D and 3D modelling, content creation, and visualisation—all at one studio. According to Mehta, the bulk of the studio’s business comes from the overseas market. The company is currently doing work for an animation series for a foreign production house, and also small projects for the domestic sector, which account for about 10-15 percent of the animation business. The studio mainly handles advertisement-related animation work and animated concepts like fillers and promos. Next year, the company expects to bag two big international projects.

On the gaming front, the company is looking at 3D computer games. This division is working on both the technology and creative aspects of games. Escosoft has developed its own gaming engine, which allows games to run on it.

While initially the company was developing games to run only on its own engine, it has since broadened its horizons by exploring other engines in the market. Currently, work is underway for developing a game with an original concept. Going forward, the agenda is to become a full-fledged gaming company and develop original games as well as games for third-party publishers. Escosoft is also deliberating tie-ups with publishers in the gaming space overseas. These publishers are large players who release 20-50 games a year. The tie-ups, informs Mehta, which are likely to be in place by next year, will be in terms of partnerships, alliances and joint ventures.

Enterprise software solutions & services
This division offers customised software solutions, and e-business and enterprise management solutions. In the first category, the company provides content creation and enhancement of Internet-based solutions, Web applications to facilitate commerce transactions, telecom and convergence software development, and e-security for critical online business transactions. Through its tie-up with IFS the company offers e-business solutions, while the tie-up with CA enables Escosoft to provide integrated EMS and e-security solutions.

The company’s convergence & telecom division provides solutions for interconnected applications and services designed to automate business processes. These services are in the areas of systems integration, resource augmentation, outsourcing of software development, call centre solutions, custom software solutions, telecommunication and switching systems for weather and meteorological services, providing framework for multimedia-based integration with legacy telecom software, text mail to voice conversion, reservation enquiry systems, and automated complaint registration. The focus, as Mehta mentions, is primarily in the field of telephony, data, wireless and wireline solutions.

As part of its infrastructure management services, Escosoft provides facilities and data processing services that include total end-to-end handling of IT services like operations and systems administration, networking services, applications support, support on e-mail, change management and vendor management.

Building skills and competencies on top of its partnerships, Escosoft has been able to win clients like the Andhra Pradesh government secretariat, Gas Authority of India, Yamaha Motors and Saint Gobain.

Clearly, Escosoft has been able to successfully implement its strategy of not restricting itself to its parent company. That itself should make the parent proud.