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Stay close to the customer's needs

K C M Kumar
Co-founder, Chairman & MD,
Speck Systems Limited
How has Speck Systems evolved over the years? What have been the milestones for the company?
Speck Systems started 25 years back. The initial four years went into the process of getting into an organized company structure for a partnership firm. Our meetings with National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) officials played a major role in our getting into the remote sensing business. It was mostly the products that were developed and available elsewhere in the world which NRSA had successfully indigenized and transferred the technology to us. We started with R&D activities improving these products, making sure those products are market worthy.

We learnt a few lessons through the initial sale of the products. Initially we thought that once we make these products people would buy them; we overlooked an important aspect of the business - 'the marketing infrastructure for these products'.

We studied the market and developed the products to meet client's needs. At that time, PCs were just about to enter the market and also the people were used to photo interpretation only. We realized that we should produce a niche photo interpretation device to give true photographic outputs to make an impact on this potential market. Thus the main stay products came into being.

Later, we proceeded in developing products which enhanced the services to the client. This image interpretation became a gateway for GIS to become an integral part of our business. The same process took us into map-making activities.

What has been the corporate philosophy underlying the success story for Speck Systems?
There are two, I would say. First, staying close to the customers' needs by understanding their complete business cycle and second, developing end to end solutions through indigenous efforts.

What is the role played by the geospatial technology in the infrastructure development in India?
The geospatial technology is the first step for the infrastructure development. Prior to planning process, availability of quality data is very important for the planners to make the project happen. Most of the times we have seen projects getting delayed due to non availability of the data.

'Mandatory' is when the government has to implement something through policies. But I think before our government can reach the state of making use of geospatial tools a mandate, they should at least initiate or enable the use of these technologies as an integral part of the planning process. Ironically, the infrastructure industry is missing out on the geospatial technology; whereas it should be the one that should drive the geospatial industry forward by using GIS for its own development.

Would you like to share your experience on some of the major projects Speck Systems has executed in India?
Out of the few companies in the geospatial industry that have chosen the domestic market as their main area of business, I can say that we have played pioneering role in the domestic market in areas like, Land Information Systems (LIS), Power distribution, revenue collection for municipalities, etc. Experiences from the aspect of learning and also for future business have been exciting. It includes learning the "hard way" of dealing with the government machinery and developing our own skill sets.

The experience with the project related to LIS with the government has made us realize that if appropriate policy initiatives are taken, the geospatial industry and the associated vertical segments will benefit tremendously.

Taking the case of our LIS project, we have learnt that a citizen has the right to property and the government has an obligation to fulfill this obligation. And this property information should be shared by the government in a transparent manner, no matter what the security issue is.

This will also lead to economic development of the country. The money locked in land can be released by way of rural credit, where it is important to have land ownership and the title for land. As of today the government is only the witness to the title, but is not guaranteeing the title. If the database generated for the LIS is made available, the policy issues will mould themselves in favour of the development of rural region.

What are the Geospatial market trends you see in India and how they are different from other markets?
Presently the trend is of Service Oriented Development. The governments are not just looking for software products but for cost effective solutions for specific requirements. Apart from departments dealing in land information, the utility segment and infrastructure development segment too require both technological and policy upgrades.

As far as defence sector is concerned, we are focusing on developing solutions that enable gathering real time information by a front line soldier. Based on our experiences with the defence sector we are strategically placed to indigenously develop such software for them. At present we are more focused on the domestic market. We have worked in Middle East and Africa also, but we do not see much difference in these markets as compared to the domestic market.

Do you think there will be productisation in verticals/ products e.g., in agriculture, environment, etc over a period of time?
Why not! Two of our important products are SpecKadaster and Speck- Electrik that have been developed in-house and are successfully used for our own projects related to LIS and power segment. We simply believe that these products have now matured over the period of time and have been tested at all the levels for utilization in the domestic market.

If you take up any project which meets the local needs then the product will be of much more importance than any other international product, mainly due to the fact that it will be cost effective, customer focused, locally developed and, importantly, its source code is available facilitating further growth and development possible. And I think this is going to be the order of the day as these software oriented products will be backed by the giant and successful Indian IT industry.

Do you foresee that after you productise your experiences in the LIS, utility or infrastructure domain that you will be selling these products in Global market?
There is a large requirement in the domestic market. Hence as a strategy we will be looking at partners from the global market to further develop these products within the domestic market. It is not yet right to say that these products are ready for international market till they are successfully deployed in India.

What are the R&D activities taking place at Speck Systems apart from the development of products necessary for the projects at hand?
Most of the R&D focus is from the customer's experience itself and the driving factor is the need. We believe that development is best done while taking along the customers - by understanding the end requirement and productise it to have a solution that is much closer to the reality.

Therefore the application development and thinking in isolation was never attempted. Nonetheless, we have been involved in extensive R&D in the defence sector as we have 15 to 20 years of close working relationships with it.

We have an aptitude and an appetite that we have developed for this business and our product and application developments are focused on geospatial intelligence and are driven within the domestic market. For this we have not only absorbed technologies from the industry but have also invested in indigenous development of our own products, services and solutions.

Is SPECK associated with education institutions for R&D?
So far none, but the option is not ruled out as it is the right way forward. I say so because we are still in the initial phase where we are gaining experiences in-house. Definitely the growth plan of the industry relies heavily on the academia and we would want to be a part of it in the times to come. We have associations with a Chennai-based company, which is developing software for the education institutes and we hope to continue our association for its further development. It is a good strategy to involve the academic institutes and research scholars along with developing indigenous software.

What is your view on the growth of an organization through acquisitions?
We believe in end-to-end solutions and in order to achieve this we have to understand the entire cycle of the customers' requirements. In cases where this requires services from a third party vendor, the process should not affect our business policies. Keeping in mind acquisitions of such requirements becomes essential and is much more cost effective than to developing it indigenously.

One such requirement for Speck was in the LiDAR segment which led to the acquisition of Spectrum Mapping LLC (USA), as it was a complete world class geospatial survey company that adds value to our existing services portfolio.

Where do you foresee Speck Systems by 2012 in terms of activities and revenue?

We would like to see Speck Systems as,

• A globally recognized player, indigenous technology supplier & solutions provider.
• An important indigenous player in product development
• Over Rs.500 crore company in the next 4-5 years.
• We believe to embed GIS into common man's lifestyle.
  
  What is your message to the young entrepreneurs that wish to enter this industry?
  People entering in this industry should know that it is a niche market and it calls for tremendous amount of focus and end to end development and only the niche player who would like to work on the technology, would succeed. The industry has a lot to offer and they will be greatly benefited.
  
  As the younger generation is tech savvy, the future area to invest in would be the location based services with software oriented innovation in retail sector.
  
  
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