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Sam Santhosh, CEO, California Software
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Sam Santhosh is the CEO and Managing Director of Calsoft; the company he founded in 1992. Focused on leading Calsoft to achieve improved growth in revenue and profitability; Sam oversaw the growth of Calsoft in all key areas – Finance, Strategy and Customer acquisition. Calsoft went public in the year 1996 and today employs over 1000 people in 12 global locations.
Under Sam’s vision Calsoft metamorphosed from a niche player in the Silicon Valley to a global player providing a range of service offerings. Over the years Sam has led the company to grow both organically as well as through acquisitions and strategic partnerships with global leaders. From the year 2004 to date Sam has directly overseen the acquisition of 5 companies. He has been instrumental in positioning and integrating the acquired companies and their services under the Calsoft group umbrella, thereby resulting in positive synergies.
Q: What are the various business lines of Calsoft?
A: Calsoft is a global company focusing on Product Engineering Services & Enterprise Solutions
Calsoft’s Product Engineering division offers outsourced product development (OPD) services with focus on Networking, Communications, Storage, Virtualization, Device Drivers and Embedded System.
The Enterprise Solutions division specializes in Package implementation, Consultancy and System Integration, BI & Analytics, workflow management etc.
Q: What is your customer profile?
A: Calsoft has some of the most respected corporations in the world as its customers. They include Amerinational, AP Moller, Britesmile, Chemoil Corporation, Expotel, HP, EMC, Johnson & Johnson, Itochu Corporation, Nortel Networks, Office Tiger, Peninsula Petroleum, Radisson, Sony, APL and CISCO.
In 2007-08, Calsoft added around 25 marquee customers such as Juniper Networks, Texas Instruments, Motorola/Symbol, Plastic Logic, Domino, Hugh Symons Group and Phones4U.
The company’s existing high profile customers such as Nortel Networks, EMC, Kronos and AP Moller Maersk continue to increase the quantum of repeat business.
Q: What is your vision for Calsoft?
A: World-over customers are seeking out more value for their investments. While in the domain of product engineering this has resulted in the search for specialized players who have a record for top class delivery, in the enterprise space the demand is for system integrators who could provide maximum business value out of technology investments.
Given its deep strength, intensive specialization, good track record of delivery and excellent customer references in both these areas, Calsoft foresees tremendous growth opportunity for itself and has carefully drawn up a robust strategy map. From a demand generation and delivery capability perspectives, in 2008-09, these strategies are translating as initiatives on the ground such as
- Expanded Market reach - Significant investment in sales and marketing
- Geographical expansion - Enlarged footprint in Europe and Asia
- Inorganic growth - Strengthening of existing alliances and partnerships and establishing new complimentary relationships
- Quality - Tightening up the customer assurance processes through recertification of quality standards and processes at all delivery centers
- Expansion of delivery infrastructure – Moved into a state-of-the art new campus that can accommodate over 2000 engineers at Chennai.
Q: Calsoft has been on an acquisition spree – can you share with us your experience in identifying these acquisitions for the Calsoft group?
A: The biggest challenge for a midsized company like Calsoft is creating enough interest in prospect companies to forge an alliance. I have often jokingly said “my good looks is what clinched the deal for us” Jokes apart, we have been assiduously following a two step process in our acquisitions – first, to identify potential targets in our chosen domains with good intrinsic value but are challenged for growth to the next level due to various constraints and secondly, ensuring that the alliance would lead to a quick unleashing of the intrinsic value and growth potential of the merged entity. Further, we have entered only into deals where the management team of the acquired entity is keen on staying on and help build Calsoft Group
We have successfully managed to do this and I truly believe that it is our USP – we have added value to these companies while enlarging the value to the overall group.
Q: The global Credit Crunch comes at an exciting phase in the Calsoft’s growth story – will this affect the pace of its growth or will you be able to convert this into a market opportunity?
A: Whenever there is economic downturn the first thing that organizations look to is reducing costs in order to survive. During a downturn, big companies’ typically cut-down on investments in huge IT/infrastructure projects. The smaller and mid sized companies on the other hand look to cost effective vendors. With lower operating costs at Calsoft we are perfectly placed to gain from the credit crunch: the right size with just the right mix of skills at optimized cost structures - a value proposition that other larger outsourcing organizations cannot offer.
Q: 'The challenge for the Indian companies today is to go up the value chain’. How is Calsoft addressing this challenge?
A: Calsoft’s climb up the value chain would be fuelled largely by excelling in our specialized domains through thought leadership and being evangelists for emerging technologies. Equally important would be our focus on forging the right partnerships with the market leaders in various domains to strengthen our positioning in the ecosystem.
Q: What will ensure success for mid sized technology company’s like Calsoft in future?
A: Any company for it to sustain a growth path needs a satisfied string of customers. As long as the customer sees value for money spent, companies all over, big and small, will succeed. Another key driver is innovation and keeping pace with the changes – technological and economical and quickly adapting your business model to encompass these. At Calsoft, we encourage an entrepreneurial environment and we strongly believe that managers at all levels can perform better if they are empowered and given the freedom to set and
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Updated on:
20 Oct, 2008
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