Blessing in Disguise

Anantharam V Varayur, MD, WEBCOM Infor­­mation Technology started the com­pany in 1989 along with his wife Sumathy and his mentor and trainer Ravi Heb­balkar. The company, initially called as Micro­Tech Computer Services, is among the top few South Indian companies offering end-to-end integrated networking solutions. The company also forayed into security and surveillance in 2007 along with computer hardware, peri­phe­rals and accessories.
With major public sectors and defense organizations as its clients, the company has implemented some of the best networks in South India. Some of its clients include Indian Institute of Science, RRI, JNCASR, PES College of Engineering in the education sector, and LRDE, CABS, ISTRAC, MCF Hassan in the defense segment. Its public sector clients include BHEL, HAL and BEL. The company has also established itself in private organizations such as Logica CMG, Rationale Software, Tenet Telecom, Customer First to name a few.

The Shift
Hailing from Bengaluru, Anatharam, a diploma holder in electronics, started his career in 1985 with HCL in Bengaluru. In HCL, he was a manager in sales support. After his stint at HCL for about 1.5 years, he decided to move on. His inquisitive nature and quest for knowledge made him pursue higher studies in digital communication and computer engineering with a post-graduate diploma from IISc.
"I was a technical guy and I thought sales would be tough for me, so I joined Indian Institute of Science," said Anantharam. Here, along with study, he also worked on a defence project, which gave him hands-on training within the institute. Convinced by a close friend MKS Kumar, he joined a Mumbai-based company called NewTech Computer Services after the completion of his course. He also went to Chennai for a brief period of time, where he met his soul mate Sumathy, a colleague at that point of time. He also met his mentor and trainer Ravi Hebbalkar.
After his training, Anatharam joined NewTech Computer Service's Bengaluru office for operations work. "I was like a resident engineer and worked 24x7. I used to do maintenance work," he said. Suddenly after sometime, the company lost interest in South India but this did not panic the daring entrepreneurs. All 3 of them came out with a daring decision, to start a company of their own. In the year 1989, Anantharam along with the other 2, set up WEBCOM, which was then named MicroTech Computer Services.
Anantharam stated, "We started our company in a small shed of 150 sq ft area in the central part of Bengaluru, Shantinagar. We started our business with zero capital and initially worked on Annual Maintenance Contract (AMCs). We started selling computers, hardware and then ventured into networking solution, where we created our niche market. Now we are into security and surveillance too."

Road to Success
WEBCOM, headquarted in Benga­luru, started doing AMCs with its prior contacts and at the same time started selling computers and peri­pherals and became registered partner with Digital, HCL. After that, the company marked its entry into the networking segment. "After gaining confidence and support from custo­mers, we diversified into networking business during 1993 as we found box sel­ling was loosing sheen due to heavy competition and thin margins. However, we did not want to totally give up the box selling as it complemented our network business," said Anantharam.
India, in the 90s was still struggling to get its niche created in the IT sector but this company with expertise of the trio, became popular among few network providers. WEBCOM started networking with thick and thin Ethernet cables and later started dealing in
fibre optics, which at that time only a few companies like BNA and Wipro used to handle. The company innovatively found out cabling between 2 buildings on public roads, from digging to trenching and fitting in the cables within a limited amount of time. "In the late 90s, there was no wireless connection available, only electric cabling was done underground on public road. We were the first in Bengaluru, who started underground network cables for connecting 2 buildings of the same company on public roads," said Sumathy A, director, WEBCOM. While talking about the company's USP, she said, "We provide end-to-end services and this is the area where we have created a benchmark in the solution providers community." Later, WEBCOM ventured into installing CCTVs for security and surveillance in hyper markets and power plants amongst others.

Major Milestones
WEBCOM was slowly catching up the market trends. As the company ventured into networ­king, it bagged a major deal around 1993-94 from Jawaharlal Nehru for Advance Scientific Research, Bengaluru. "The challenge was to fulfill the requirement of setting up networks with fibre optic cables. Though we paid heavily on importing those cables, we marked the first breakthrough for our company," pointed Anantharam.
After gaining reputation in the market, a high court network setup deal came to them in 1998-99. The challenge was to change all the network cables to new ones in 2 days. The entire team worked 24x7 and got the work done in time. "Here, we took a great risk of fulfilling the demand, the main challenge was to unplug the cables and fit new ones in the same position before Monday morning. Fortunately, we completed on Sunday midnight only," said Anantharam.
The ‘on-time' service brought them tremendous response from the market and this was how the company emerged as a leader and created its strong hold. Anantharam is personally CCNA, CCDA certified in Cisco Products, DCNA- Dlink certified network associate, MILESTONE Certified Platinum Partner, and also got certified on IBM Servers, which gave him enough opportunity and trust of the customers.
Amidst all, the IT boom was lowering down, so, the company swiftly changed its customer segment to public sector units in 2001. WEBCOM worked with defence establishments and public sector organizations like HAL, ISRO, BHEL, NTPC. Here, the company set up many network connections, always on time.
However, when the company ventured into security and surveillance in 2007, it came as a blessing in disguise as one of their major customer BHEL offered them to handle a CCTV project. They took up the project and from then onwards the company never looked back. The first big order for CCTV itself was of Rs 2.6 crore. "We successfully executed the project without even the direct presence of the principal M/s PELCO at that time in India. We learnt every thing, functioning of speed dome, PTZ functionality, encoder configuration and video management software configuration," added Anantharam.

Revenue
The networking component of the company accounts for 60% of its revenue generation and 20-25% comes from security and surveillance and rest from computers, peripherals and accessories. The total revenue generated by the company in the year 2010 was around Rs 11.56 crore and the total turnover accounted for Rs 21 crore. The husband-wife duo have bought all the shares from Ravi Hebbalkar last year, and are the owners of the WEBCOM now.

Engagements
Apart from WEBCOM, Anantharam has also started Business Network International (BNI) in Bengaluru, along with 2 other entrepreneurs. Here, many business people from different verticals meet and exchange business referrals.This works on the principle of Givers Gain.
"This concept is in the US and we brought it to Bengaluru. This actually helps my company to grow and also helps young entrepreneurs," said Anantharam. It has altogether 15 chapters/groups with 520 members all over the city. The couple also have a vision to start a retirement home, which will also have an orphanage attached to it. The aim is that elders get to enjoy the company of grandchildren and the orphan children get love and affection of grandparents.

Advice to Young Entrepreneurs
"Don't give up, because the day one gives up, the very next day success might knock at your door," said Anantharam.
While Sumathy added, "An entrepreneur should change with technology to grow. They should accept the change and should have a vision to reach the pinnacle."