“With about 25%+ population of Kenya online, 62% accessing the web using mobile, and 48% using Mobile payments, the opportunities for digital marketing and innovation are  multi dimensional. This is what motivated us to invest in Kenya and make it the gateway to enter Africa,” said Sriram.

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African countries are fast emerging as the preferred business destination of IT companies back home. Since the governments of African countries (specifically in East Africa) are laying stress on developing their IT infrastructure in a big way, a sizeable amount of work is being outsourced to companies in Hyderabad.

The US, which was the biggest business destination for IT companies here, till a couple of years back, has now given way to other countries like Africa, China and Bangladesh. Among them Africa is the ‘next upcoming destination’ and outsources IT Development and Product Development work to companies in Hyderabad.

“Africa is presently in the same situation we were in about ten years back. They are now planning to set up IT parks and SEZs and provide a lot of opportunities to companies here. East African countries like Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are today where Hyderabad was 10 to 15 years back. They are growing exponentially and with good IT and Mobile Infrastructure, it would take them just 5 years to reach where we are today. This is the right time for Indian IT companies to set up shop in Africa. We have acquired over 200 clients in African countries within a span of one year,” said Sriram Bharatam, CEO of iridium Interactive, a NASSCOM member company.

Having realized the potential of African countries like Namibia, Sudan, Tunisia, Angola and Zambia, the Software Technology Parks of India’s Hyderabad chapter has also been collaborating with officials from the African Embassy to help interested companies get in touch with the industry in Africa, indicated a Nasscom member.

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SANGEETHA DEVI DUNDOO (Hindu )

A quirk of fate made Sriram Bharatham and Bharathi trade their lucrative jobs for social entrepreneurship.

The office space in iridium Interactive is cluttered and spacious, all at once. We walk through a maze of cubicles where employees are busy at their workstations and then walk through a long pathway with plenty of natural light streaming in through the huge glass panes. On a row of bamboo modas, a long winding sheet of paper rests bearing a long list of names. “We celebrated the company’s eleventh anniversary recently and this list has the names of each and every one who worked with us in all these years,” says Sriram Bharatam, the CEO, as he greets us.

The spacious walkway is where ‘Iridium’ites have their morning huddle and the creative and logic teams come together to share ideas. Sriram Bharatam is an engineer who went on to studyinternational business, pursued higher education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, returned to India to join Hewlett-Packard JV, New Delhi, working in the strategy and consulting practice. He swiftly rose among the ranks when in his 20s and then, by a quirk of fate, turned a social entrepreneur with Cause an Effect (CnE) and Iridium Interactive. Giving him company is his wife Bharathi, a chartered accountant, who never got to do accounting but revels in the social pursuits of Cause an Effect.

Ripple effect

The devastating cyclone that hit Orissa in 1999 triggered the change for Sriram and Bharathi. “We were both in New Delhi a year after our wedding. Sriram was pretty much a jetsetter. He lost his passport and we came to Hyderabad to get a duplicate passport,” Bharathi rewinds. The news of the cyclone made them want to do their bit. “We walked into a cyber cafe and created a portal for Cause an Effect and helped in raising funds for victims through Prime Minister and Chief Minister relief funds,” says Sriram. Within days, they had gunny bags full of cheques. They raised nearly 1.5 million dollars as contribution from 18 million people. “We felt responsible and accountable. We channelised the cheques to the respective relief funds,” adds Bharathi.

The effort that went towards building a global community of 18 million in just 45 days through CnE won Sriram the Kauffman Community Award for social entrepreneurship in 2004. The cushy, high paying job in New Delhi soon became a thing of the past. Sriram and Bharathi stayed put in Hyderabad and spearheaded Cause an Effect, which became a non-for-profit organisation with a focus on sustainable livelihoods, women, health, childcare, disability and much more.

Within no time, iridium Interactive was also born. While iridium became a commercial enterprise, CnE thrived on social entrepreneurship. “During the tsunami, we understood that more funds were flowing in than manpower. People needed temporary livelihood measures than anything else. We produced seven movies on topics such as mushroom cultivation, vermi compost, how to repair mechanised boats, kitchen farming, etc in four languages and shared them with our partner NGOs including NASSCOM Foundation, who in turn trained people in their centres. Around 1500 to 2000 volunteers were trained in each module; they in turn spread the message among people affected by tsunami,” says Bharathi.

From a one-room office to an enterprise that now meets requirements of more than 2000 clients within Hyderabad alone, iridium has come a long way. Even within the commercial setup, Sriram and Bharathi have donned their Good Samaritan hats. One of the many things that Iridium is credited for is the process of making websites ‘accessible’. Accessibility refers to developing websites that can be navigated by differently-abled users. What’s more? The company has employed visually challenged software developers. “It’s high time companies look beyond employing differently-abled people merely as telephone operators. Some of the people trained by us in mainstream work are now well placed in larger companies and the NASSCOM inclusion team, where there is more scope to grow,” says Sriram. In fact, Iridium is now in the process of creating voice-enabled websites to make the Net accessible to the hearing impaired.

SWOT, modules and mobile streaming

Sriram recently spent a few weeks in East Africa, testing new modules. He lets us in on what’s brewing: “We are working towards capacity building exercises for micro and small entrepreneurs. A company that has just two people also has needs policies, regulations, HR, accounting, finance management, etc but doesn’t know how to handle diverse portfolios. These are companies that aren’t able to make steady progress and reach out to new clients. We faced these problems when we started off and know what it takes. Ideally we shouldn’t have taken this long to reach where we are today.”

Sriram’s team has created ‘How to…’ modules that help small and micro entrepreneurs. Modules such as how to evaluate balance sheets and how to review a company through SWOT analysis will be soon streamed through mobile phones. “We did pilot projects in East Africa involving five countries and more than 200 clients,” informs Sriram. If logistics are worked out, expect similar modules to be introduced in India as well.

Their office is a mix of professionals with different core strengths. “We don’t strictly go by qualification. We look for people who are passionate about their work and those who can look beyond mere technology,” echo Bharathi and Sriram. And those passionate about doing out-of-the-box work have been knocking at their doors, even from premier institutes. “Right now, we have a few interns from IIT Guwahati,” smiles Sriram.

He hastens to add, “But now and then we are faced with the situation where candidates are compelled to move out because their parents want to see them placed in larger companies with fatter paycheques. Though the candidates themselves are very happy with their work, parental pressure takes a toll. Culturally, in India we are conditioned to believe that it is rude to say NO to our elders.”

Sriram and Bharathi know firsthand about parental perceptions. “Even today, our respective parents feel we should have done what our peers did — be ‘well settled’ in the US. For us, that seems like the worst thing. We’d rather work here and create opportunities for others than run away to the United States,” smiles Sriram.

As Published in Hindu

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The website intends to be a common platform to debate and analyze the challenges faced by public health, development of common as well as complementary sensibilities, exchange of ideas and researchers, and mapping the needs of these countries for developing a common plan of action to address public health challenges.

When i say website with a difference it is not just the website and its concept, its also about the team behind it.  A team of extremely dedicated iridiumoholics put together this website in just a matter of few months. The team – Nitu, Shabbu, Samar, Rajeev, me with special mention to Shiv and Kamil, would daily have internal meetings, con-calls with clients with endless inputs from the client by the minute. This often called for stretching beyond normal official hours which the team never hesitated to abide by sometimes even working on weekends. Endless dedication of the team has indeed made this project quiet a success in a very short span of time. Within its first week of going live internally there were almost 100 member registrations from within the organization. We are sure once its open to the target audience it is sure to create a wave globally amongst the public health practitioners and bring them together to educate the world about the importance of public health.

With this we march ahead with yet another signature success story to talk about.

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Just a few days old at iridium (Delhi office), I was put in the team to work on this project. We were given a flat 15 days to get the new design and the entire back-end implemented, but kudos to our technical team (also consisting of new joinees) for getting the portal up and running. This year we also ensured active customer support (making sure that we answer each and every query) and extended it to social media (via Facebook); additionally we also used the fan page to generate buzz.

The project received a tremendous response of 40,000 business plans got submitted on the website.

The project exposed me to the absolute vastness in terms of budget, impact, brand awareness and connect and the impact such an activity could have. There was a lot of cross functional synergy required, a lot of fire-fighting (at times), a lot of unlearning and learning and hard work and all of this was worth when our team got the chance to attend the Grand Finale and to watch the participants we have interacted with/supported/helped deliver those business plan presentations. It was like reliving the entire 4-5 months of working on the project.

And then came the big one, the announcement of the Grand Finale winner! It was a great feeling for us to have helped someone to win a brand new WagonR and Rs 10 Lakhs.

In the photograph, this is our team with Ms. Aparna Bhatnagar (winner of the WagonR Think Big Challenge).

Not to forget we (our team) got a chance to meet Madhavan (aka Manu of Tanu weds Manu) and we even got a photograph clicked with him ☺

Overall it’s been a kick ass experience and we are already looking forward to its next edition.

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• iridium Interactive Turns 11!
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• When we met!