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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

August - 2012 - issue > Cover Story

Raju Vegesna: Being the catalyst of change, Sify version 3.0

Anamika Sahu
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Anamika Sahu
When Raju Vegesna took over as the Chairman of the Board of NASDAQ-listed Sify Technologies in 2005, it was the beginning of a new era for the company. Founded in the late 1990s, Sify had been among India’s earliest Internet players and the nation’s first private ISP. It had built a powerful brand with a strong consumer franchise, but was struggling to find its way in an increasingly competitive Indian market. But in a short span of six years, Sify Technologies has emerged as an enterprise-focused company with a diverse portfolio of network services, IT services, and software services.

As Raju fondly recalls, it has been a hectic journey for Sify as it upgraded from "version 1.0" to "version 2.0", but this hasn't deterred him from recently launching what he refers to as "Sify 3.0". This next era will have Sify focusing on managed services, taking advantage of the convergence of telecom and IT services, and leveraging Sify's strong technical and operational capabilities that it built in the 2.0 era. The plan for the next five years is to emerge as an end-to-end solutions provider for both large enterprises and the growing SME market, earning the confidence of the CIOs by better understanding their business needs and designing its offers around those needs.

Given his past track record of churning out three successful startups, with one of them sold for more than a billion dollars, his team knows that when Raju sets his mind to something, he is sure to deliver on his promise.

From version 1.0 to 2.0: The Revamp

Since its founding years, Sify had operated with a single minded focus on being India's pioneering Internet Service Provider (ISP). The company had caught the imagination of the public in the late 90's by breaking into the unexplored Internet field and becoming a trend-setting leader in this nascent market. By 2005, this was no longer a compelling USP. Despite being one of the first players in the ISP market, late entrants provided stiff competition in the consumer market. Many of these players were mobile operators, with a natural advantage of scale and the ability to leverage huge investments. When Raju took charge, he knew that the company had to explore new areas of business if they were to remain relevant.


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