What do you think sets OrangeScape apart?
Platform as a Service (PaaS) has two distinct layers. One is as a general purpose programming platform, such as Azure and Google App Engine, using which you could build a wide range of applications – from games to business apps like order processing system. OrangeScape’s platform, on the other hand, is specialized. You could refer to it as an Application Platform as a Service (APaaS) tailored for building business applications. Our platform provides powerful abstractions and simplifications to develop business applications in a highly efficient manner. On another dimension, look at it as High Control versus High Productivity Platforms. OrangeScape is a High Productivity platform. The analogy is Visual C++ versus Visual Basic. Developers know VC++ is powerful and lot more flexible when compared to Visual Basic but there are a million developers who love Visual Basic for a simple reason – High Productivity. Fast forward to the cloud era – that is OrangeScape for you! A developer would have less control when he or she works with OrangeScape but he or she benefits from far higher productivity owing to the high level of abstractions. So that’s roughly how OrangeScape has created its own niche in the PaaS landscape.
Why did you decide to focus on business apps? Was this because of your reading of the market or was this based on the kind of customers you had garnered up to that point?
Our mission and purpose since inception has been to simplify business application development. Platform as a Service is essentially a cloud variant of what we had been doing all along.
Building business applications has always involved three pieces - a software platform, an infrastructure platform on top of which the software runs and the domain expertise. These are like three legs of a stool.
When we started out, we created the software platform to simplify business application development. And then we realized that this was not sufficient. It is also very important to enable the infrastructure for the software platform to run. That is where the cloud came in and solved the infrastructure problem. So we put the software that we had on top of cloud infrastructure which then led to the Application Platform as a Service offering from OrangeScape.
When you took your offering to the cloud, there must have been challenges?
Actually, luckily, there were not too many. In our case, the cloud was a boon rather than a bane. Prior to the advent of the cloud, the enterprise market for application development had settled around either a .Net or a Java programming environment. It was difficult to unsettle or create a disruption. Luckily the cloud came in and disrupted the market. The cloud suddenly made choices like Java or .Net irrelevant. And people are now open and willing to consider new options in a disruptive environment created by Cloud phenomena. So, the cloud actually helped OrangeScape.
You have some really impressive customers – Unilever, Citibank, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sterlite–could you describe how you got them on board?
The fundamental value proposition that OrangeScape offers is high productivity application development. In addition, there is an option to pick a suitable deployment environment- a private cloud/on premise or a public cloud.
So that makes OrangeScape very compelling for partners and customers.
A few customers like Sterlite run on Google App Engine public cloud, others like Unilever and Pfizer run on their own virtualized environment on a private cloud.
What role has marketing played in this success?
Until a year ago, we did not do aggressive marketing. In the last one year however, we have stepped up our efforts and done a number of things – public relations, analyst relations, partnership announcements, sponsoring and participating in events such as Cloud Camp, Developer Camps, Facebook garage and Tedx Chennai and iCMG Architecture summit in Bangalore etc. All of these have helped the branding and market reach for OrangeScape.
It will be interesting to hear what you did before that – what you did to gain recognition for your offering when you were still an emerging company. What did you do that got you into the radar of the big names?
We did some prudent brand-building. Our product was acknowledged by NASSCOM as one of the top market facing IT innovations for two consecutive years – 2006 and 2007. The next year we made it as one of NASSCOM’s top three emerging product companies.
I lead the marketing effort in a sense and network a lot, both real-world and online. My LinkedIn connections, for example, are over 3,000. All this helped us secure our first set of customers. In the early days, a company may not have big money to invest in marketing. So, it is better to get the first set of customers through networking, references and business connects and once those validations have been achieved, then you have to scale marketing efforts.
Was competition a challenge - in the beginning at least?
When the market is exploding, there is so much more market share to garner. For the next three to four years, there is going to be enough market for OrangeScape, for a LongJump or a Force.com. Only after two to three years from now will the market witness heavy competition and consolidation. Right now, it is a sort of a green field.
Being the first company to be part of the 1M/1M – Persistent Systems initiative, can you throw some light on what this spells for OrangeScape and what you are expecting from it?
Sramana Mitra is helping OrangeScape to set up partnerships, especially go-to-market partnerships in the US. This will help us to take our product to large enterprises – Global 2000 companies - in the North American market – without having to invest heavily on feet-on-street Sales. This is a win-win partnership because we are looking at an average deal size of a couple of million dollars, which will have equal revenue attribution both for OrangeScape and Persistent Systems. We are looking at very significant business in the next two to three years’ time.
The 1M/1M initiativeis a global initiative that aims to help a million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars in annual revenue by 2020. It is founded by Sramana Mitra, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. OrangeScape is the first Indian company to be backed by the 1M/1M- Persistent Systems partnership.
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What other plans do you have for the next two to three years?
When compared to a product, platforms inherently have multiple use cases – otherwise it is not a platform. This is a boom and a bane. So, we are going after few use cases that have large potential. One of the use cases we have picked for OrangeScape is the longtail application platform for enterprises. That is what Persistent is trying to take to market for us.
The second big use case that we have identified is to address the SMBIT services companies. We are positioning OrangeScape Studio as a tool for them to build applications faster, cheaper, better and also position them in the cloud market offering ‘cloud services’ instead the bloodied ‘IT Services’.
What advice do you have for growing companies?
First, do a lot of networking. Second, never forget that entrepreneurs by definition are salespeople. Just because you are from a technical background, it does not mean you can’t sell. In the early stages, the founders have to go to the market and sell. You can’t sit in the office, hire a sales guy and expect him to sell your product. If you are not willing to sell, I don’t think you should even start a company. Talking to customers is very important and will help obtain firsthand feedback.