Prabhat Agarwal of Parsec Technologies
has learnt to deal with the varying fortunes of a new business venture.
He shares with SHIPRA ARORA the challenges of running a start-up—and
emerging successful
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| Prabhat Agarwal, CEO and Co-founder, Parsec
Technologies |
The primarily qualities of an entrepreneur are
resilience and patience. This learning has kept Prabhat Agarwal,
CEO and co-founder of Parsec Technologies in good stead. For a first
generation entrepreneur, who entered the industry during the boom
and bust phase, it has been a tough battle for Agarwal. However,
when the going gets tough the tough get going. Armed with determination,
he steered Parsec Technologies to one of the leading Indian software
product companies providing contact centre solutions and specialised
BPO services (through its subsidiary Parsec Interact Inc). It has
names like Whirlpool, Hindustan Lever, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Salore,
etc, as its customers.
Agarwal, an Electrical Engineer from IIT Delhi
and an IIM Ahmedabad Alumni, along with two fellow IITians set up
Parsec Technologies, headquartered in Delhi, in 1993-1994. (While
the other two remain stakeholders in the company, Agarwal is in-charge
of all the company’s operations.) It was his entrepreneurial
streak that made him leave his job with a consulting firm, Feedback
Ventures, and start his own company.
Considering that it was one of the most promising
industries at the time, IT and telecom appeared a lucrative segment
to him. Says Agarwal, “It was the time when this industry
was flourishing and everyone was talking about the software segment.”
The trio took up two new ventures—Parsec Techn-ologies and
an Internet service company in the US called WhoWhere?—with
the latter eventually getting acquired by Lycos in 1998.
They decided to focus on the product segment,
very much aware that it was the less beaten track and a tough one
at that. “We were aware that this would be wrought with challenges
and it has been challenging. How-ever, with the right product for
the right segment at the right time, the company has been able to
come through successfully,” says Agarwal.
The company rightly identified the need for contact
centre solutions in the market at that time. The first product to
roll out of its kitty was a voice mail solution.
His few years of experience at Feedback Ventures
helped Agarwal meet the challenges of a start-up. (Before Feedback
Ventures he had a two-year stint with HCL in sales and marketing.)
Being a small company, Feedback Ventures provided
him an insight into the dynamics of a start-up. “Having worked
with a large organisation helps you later in your own venture when
it stabilised. But the lessons for how to get things done with the
minimum amount of resources can come only from the experience in
a small organisation,” he points out. They ensured fiscal
discipline to get through the initial period of tight financial
conditions without breaking apart.
Parsec started its operations in 1994 in a lab
space provided by IIT Delhi. The first milestone came the very next
year when the company received a Rs 30 lakh funding from ICICI,
followed by the second funding of Rs 3 crore in 1998. Another round
of Rs 2 crore funding came in 2000 from Gujarat Ventures.
Selling off the second venture—WhoWhere?—brought
in some more capital. The next significant milestone came for the
company with SIDBI sanctioning a funding of Rs 4 crore.
When Parsec had received funding from Gujarat
Ventures, it was still a very small company with four-five people
in the development team and a sales force of another five-six people.
The company had around 15 customers for its voice mail solution
and was ready with the prototype of its core product— the
call centre solution called Paragon.
The major focus was to ramp up the core product,
commercialise it and make it a global product. With the investments
coming in from Gujarat Ventures, the marketing and development efforts
were scaled up and Paragon was launched in India in 2000 and was
taken to the US the following year. The company even got a site
working in the US.
However, in 2001 as the market started slowing
down in the US, things were not moving as expected. According to
Agarwal, the funding was not coming and there was the added temptation
of giving in to the larger companies who were actively on the acquisition
prowl.
“You are under a lot of temptations during
bad times to take shortcuts. However, the biggest lesson in downfall
is that if you are committed to the business then one should resist
the temptation because the tide will turn around,” he explains.
And that is the point from where the business for Parsec really
started taking off.
This was made possible by the call taken for
re-strategising the company’s operations and positioning in
the market. Driving the re-structuring process, Agarwal was responsible
for bringing about the final take-off for the company.
Agarwal made two vital decisions—converting
the US operations into a subsidiary providing specialised BPO services
for the mortgage industry, and focussing largely on one application,
i.e. outbound with inbound capabilities.
Despite offering other products in the market,
Agarwal is presently focussing on the Paragon Call Centre Suite.
In terms of market segments for its product, the company has decided
to focus on the domestic, South East Asian and Middle East markets.
Parsec has started seeing the positive results
of the new strategy with the turnaround in its fortunes. Agarwal
has spearheaded the company towards 100 percent growth year-on-year
since 2002. He has also been responsible for making Paragon one
of the leading call centre solutions coming from an Indian company.
He has recently expanded the Paragon suite to
the Middle East market and is now planning to take the product to
the Chinese and South African markets.
Agarwal insists that one needs to give at least
five-ten years for a start-up before it starts stabilisng. Having
stood through this initial period of tests and temptations and having
stabilised the company, he is now all charged to take Parsec to
its next phase of evolution, i.e. growth.
shipra@expresscomputeronline.com
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