Pramode Haque's Veraz comes to India
By siliconindia staff writer   |   Tuesday, 10 February 2004, 20:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: Pramod Haque may have replaced Vinod Khosla as the leading venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, but a fledgling start-up in which both have invested, is working overtime to gain ground in the Indian market, reports Economic Times. Veraz Networks, a San Jose company offering softswitch-based packet telephony solutions, has set up a customer support and research and development centre in Pune. It has also bagged a multi-million dollar contract to supply voice over Internet protocol (VOiP)-based solutions from one of the top five telecom players in India. The details of the deal are yet to be made public. Though it could not be confirmed, the chances are it could be for Reliance Infocomm or Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd’s international long-distance network. When announced, it would be the second significant VOiP deal in the Indian telecom carrier market after international carrier Data Access contracting for Vocaltec solutions. Veraz offers solutions like IP-based softswitch, media gateway and digital compression products that could suit both existing carriers which may have an array of traditional TDM based switches, and the new carriers wanting to deploy IP for its ventures. So far, only Data Access has bet, and bet big, on deploying VOiP for its international traffic. The remaining biggies such as Reliance Infocomm, Bharti Tele-Ventures, BSNL-MTNL, Tata Indicom and Hutch are yet to look at VOiP in any significant way. However, Veraz executive vice-president of global marketing Amit Chawla maintained that his company is in touch with all the top players to convince them to adopt VOiP, including Reliance, Bharti and BSNL. But isn’t the market saturated with most of the players having already decided on their technology platforms long ago and rolling out? “Far from being saturated, a big market exists for us in India, especially for replacing the TDM switches. I can say that without exception all players are looking at deploying VOiP as a technology for specific applications. We already have 700 customers in 140 countries, including 10 VOiP networks in the Far East, Eastern Europe, the US, Latin America, and now India,” said Chawla. To capitalise on this window of opportunity in India, Veraz plans to expand its presence over the next few months. It is in the process of raising a sales and marketing team in Delhi and Mumbai. “Relationships with some system integrators for customer service and post-sales support have been established. Now we are in the process of placing key sales and marketing personnel and could set up a fully-owned subsidiary,” according to Chawla. Veraz was formed in January 2003 with the merger of Israel-based ECI Telecom with US-based Nexverse Networks. It has been funded by Khosla’s Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Haque’s Norwest Venture Partners, Argonaut Private Equity, Battery Ventures and Levensohn Venture Partners.

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