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Evolution of mining software market in India
Sandeep Ray
Country Manager, Datamine International Ltd.
Abstract
The concept of using computers for
exploration, geological modeling and mine planning began in India towards later
part of 80s. Sandeep Ray presents an evolutionary sketch of development in this
field.
The evolution of computer softwares related to the mining
industries started towards the late 70's across the world with the need clearly
apparent for the operative gold mines. The sustenance of the gold mines depended
on accurate prediction of the nature of the deposit along with the grade
estimation. This was crucial to avoid any wasteful mining leading to barren
faces. Many of the mining softwares were initiated by the existing mining
companies and many were off-loaded to universities for development as a project.
The concept of using computers for exploration, geological modeling and
mine planning started in India towards the later half of the 80s. Mining
Companies started realising the need for such software for a more accurate and
faster prediction of the deposit. These companies also realised that with such
softwares, it was possible to estimate reserves as well as grades with variable
cutoffs much faster and accurately as compared to manual methods. Thus the race
to capture the Indian Mining Market had started with international brands like
SURPAC, DATAMINE making their presence felt by appointing distributors for
India. Not to be left behind were the indigenous software from CMC and later by
RAMCO. Every software vendor claimed their software to be the best and the
competition was fierce. Though these softwares were originally designed to cater
to a specific segment of the mining industry, but were project as a complete
solution for the mining industry in India. With colourful demos and high
commitments, the vendors sold their software to the Indian mining houses only to
later5 realise that a purchase order is not the end of that client. There is
something more important after the selling has been made and that is making the
software do what it had been promised to do. This is what changed the position
of the existing softwares in terms of market share and dependability. Customers
were becoming more matured and demanded that benchmarks be performed on their
own data and they would judge which software will suite their organisation.
Customers were ready to pay a premium for a particular software that they had
seen and tested would do the job. Thus software which had the largest user base
within India or abroad were not necessarily the best.
A very few
distributors did give any importance to after sales service and technical
support to the existing clients. Most of them just forgot the clients after
selling them the product which at many places were been dumped without actually
being utilised. One of the main reason for this was the lack of any specialised
technical support team, well trained on the software, with these distributors.
Most of the Indian vendors did have a huge software development team mainly to
customise their package to suite that of the clients. One of the distributors to
emphasise on a strong technical support team was HCL, then distributing
Datamine.
Datamine entered India through then HCL Hewlett-Packard Ltd. in 1990 bagging the
Hindustan Zinc Ltd. order at Rampura Agucha and then to bag the other 3 HZL
orders under the world bank grant. It also picked up the 3 SAIL orders for the
supply of the Datamine software. In 1995, the distributorship rights for the
Datamine software were shifted from HCL HP to NIIT Ltd. under a new CAD/CAM
division. Datamine grew from having a small 10% market share to capture the
entire 100% in the 1996 and still holds the major market share of the mining
software business of India. With a modest 20 licences in India, it currently
holds more than 80% of the Indian market share (1997-98).
The success of
the Datamine range of products, has been its technical edge over that of other
softwares available in the market. The development of new features, techniques
and new competitive pricing were the major points which helped Datamine capture
the market. This is the only software which is constantly being developed to
incorporate new, unique features based on the feed backs from the existing users
essential to the changing mining scenario. Features like UNFOLD, Auto-Blending
had never been present in other mining packages before. We at Datamine, do
believe that no software is ideal. Every software has been designed for a
specific function and that softwares should be able to import and export data
from other similar packages to extract the best of each of the packages. This is
what is been done by large mining consulting houses like BHP, CRA, etc. Datamine
was again the first software to develop import / export drivers to other
international mining packages like SURPAC, MOCROMINE, GDM, WHITTLE and also to
standard GIS packages like ArcInfo. Today Datatime can import an AutoCAD drawing
file directly as a binary file and convert the same into a 3D datatime file.
Thus with the presence of a competent technical team and a powerful
software, NIIT entered into the phase of consultancy using the Datamine software
for various virgin deposit. It successfully completed jobs for deposit. It
successfully completed jobs for M. N. Dastur and Gujarat Mineral Industries
Consulting Services Ltd. Besides doing consulting job on its own, NIIT also tied
up with various organisations like Indian Bureau of Mines, MECL for jointly
performing such jobs.
With the growth in the number of clients and a
large potential for consulting jobs, it was imperative that the technical team
should be expanded to meet the future challenges. Again the existing Indian
clients should get the same level of support for which Datamine is well known
globally. All these factors led to the opening up of the first International
Mining Software house in India. Launched in the Month of April 1998, this office
operates as a branch office to the Datamine International Ltd., UK and is
responsible for all sales, support and consulting within India. The long term
objective of this office is to expand its territory to cover the entire
Asia-Pacific. The reaction of the existing clients can only be proven by the
fact that today 80% of the clients have entered into maintenance as compared to
45% before the formation of this branch office. Today Datamine International
Ltd., India Branch Office guarantees responses to technical queries within 24
hrs of receipt. Also, all our Indianclients have access to our international
technical staff situated across the world. Therefore, with globalisation, where
ever a user goes, he / shed has the access to a Datamine technical support
person within the same time zone to cater to his / her specific query.
We at Datamine, believe that a prompt and effective support will
automatically lead to market standardisation for the Datamine range of
products.
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