By Jayakishore Bayadi

A young trader back in the nineties was working at the 'coffee desk' with a leading commodity trading house in South East Asia. He worked with big names in the industry like Nestle, P&G, Lavazza to name a few. During his stint there he realized that the biggest of commodity houses still used obsolete IT systems to run the business, and there were far too many loopholes in their internal processes. Then came the vision to provide a comprehensive Commodity Trade and Risk Management (CTRM) software product that would streamline and strengthen operations, provide organization-wide visibility and decision support tools for top management.

Identifying the need in the market and with a little knowledge of software development, Manav Garg, decided to quit his job in 2001 to start a company - Eka Software Solutions. Today Eka Software is a leading provider of commodity trade and risk management software for managing physical trading, position, P&L, risk, logistics and finance operations for agriculture and metals markets.

Commodity markets are known for their complexity, and the high degree of risk and uncertainty that surround them. Buyers, traders and producers of commodities have to deal with complicated supply chains that involve complex contracts, pricing structures and financial derivative instruments. Added to this there is a tremendous amount of price and demand/supply volatility, along with the challenges associated with multiple-time zones, currencies and modes of transportation, languages, taxation, local laws, as well as stringent government regulations and compliance requirements.

To manage these complexities and associated risks, commodity firms must have the ability to view and manage positions and exposure on a real-time basis. In this scenario, it is mission critical for organization-wide information to be processed, analyzed and made available in real-time. Needless to say, the right IT systems can provide substantial differentiation and competitive advantage to firms that deploy them. The ongoing turmoil in the global financial markets and continuing uncertainty are putting even higher pressure on firms and thereby accentuating this need.

Eka – an integrated enterprise product

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