DbyDx Software Building the technology of tomorrow Date:   Wednesday , September 30, 2009 Imagine passing by a residential building and instead of looking at it directly, you see the building through your mobile phone’s camera and you immediately get all the details about the building - when was it built, by whom, how many floors it has, if there is a house vacant in it, the specifics about it, and at what price it is available currently. No, this is not a scene from a sci-fi movie but instead a technology called ‘Augmented Reality (AR)’ that will soon be available in the market, thanks to a vibrant and young company called DbyDx Software. Founded in 2005 by three IITians, the Noida based company believes in working on technologies for tomorrow. “The entrepreneurial spirit is what ties most IITians together. As students, my friends and I had always desired to start on our own. Even while studying, we did certain software projects for some companies from Kanpur’s thriving leather industry. But we wanted to have some industry experience, and hence after graduating we worked for some time to gather knowledge,” says Abhishek Vinod Singh, commonly called AVS among his IIT Batch-mates, Co-founder and CEO, DbyDx Software. After spending considerable time working for MNCs and startups, the three musketeers - AVS, Kapil Tyagi, and Nitin Verma - entered into their own venture. From an outlook, the company seems like any other technology company but when observed closely one will be surprised to see the kind of work and the passion with which the team works. Unlike most IT services companies that focus on a particular domain such as BFSI, Healthcare, Pharma, and more, DbyDx focuses on technologies. “We are a pure technology oriented company. So we decide on which technology to work on and we find potential customers for those technologies and bid for projects,” explains Singh. The company has established three Centers of Excellence (CoE) that are dedicated to developing mobile applications, Web applications, and providing automated and manual quality assurance using the newest technology in the market. These CoEs are backed with in-house research and development (R&D) activities. “We constantly research on various new and upcoming technologies and build prototypes of these technologies that are used by our business development team to acquire new customers,” says Tyagi, Co-founder and CTO, DbyDx Software. From iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Symbian, Windows mobile, and J2ME to Palm Pre, the company builds various mobile apps on these platforms. Most of these applications either provide location based services (such as Vehicle Tracking System and Location based Targeted Mobile Advertising) or are used for enterprise purpose (such as Mobile CRM Client for Sales Force and other CRM tools) or are Smart Utilities like TXTBlocker that blocks all SMS and calls on your phone as soon as you start driving. The company recently launched an application called TXTLater, a BlackBerry e-mail, SMS and call scheduler that is now available in the BlackBerry App World. The other product launched is Message2 Task. Just as one can move an email to tasks in Microsoft Outlook and Google mail, one can do it in BlackBerry too with this application. The applications are available at just $9.95 and $2.95 respectively. Augmented Reality is another area in which DbyDx Software is currently developing applications for a major real estate customer in the U.S. “The idea is very simple. You see an object through your mobile’s camera and we will augment it with additional information or Meta-data about it that is available to us. This is a relatively new area of research and we will continue to explore more opportunities in this,” explains Tyagi. The mobile space currently contributes 30 percent of the company’s revenues. With respect to Web technologies, the company is primarily focusing on RIA (rich internet applications). It has already begun developing several Web applications that are based on technologies like Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Air, and Adobe Flex. The team recently developed a website for one of the customers Coodam.com. The website is a virtual multiparty classroom where tutors can give lessons to people in different places of the world. The entire project was developed with a rich interface. The company also has an independent team of quality assurance professionals who do automated and manual quality assurance for the projects that the company undertakes and also for the clients who come solely for this service. Today, the company’s strength stands at 60 and at any given time 10 percent of the team is dedicated to in-house research and development. Those who have shown consistent performance project after project with a bend of innovation in their work are chosen for research. In the early years, the company did face problems like every other startup. There was the challenge of convincing customers about its capabilities, especially in terms of the billing rate it demanded for its work. The company is definitely expensive than other players in this field but is equally confident about its capability and the quality of work the team can deliver. Hence, in order to get customer’s confidence the company had to take up a few initial projects free of cost. However, the challenges now are much more complex. “We have constantly strived to be a step ahead in the kind of products we build. But unfortunately, we do not always have the technology infrastructure support that we need for this. For example, initially 3G was not available in India; hence some of the software that we have built for 3G could not be tested here. We had to depend on some of our representatives in the U.S. to test it for us, which was expensive,” says Verma, Co-founder and COO, DbyDx Software. Similarly, there is a lack of latest mobile devices such as Apple iPhone 3Gs, which is still not available in India. The team builds applications for it but is unable to test and has to rely on simulators, which are not always 100 percent credible. On the sales front, the company feels fortunate to have registered with an online portal called Guru.com. It is on the way to becoming the highest revenue earning company on that portal, which is a positive sign when it comes to getting good leads for sales. In the four years of its existence, DbyDx has served over 100 customers. Arcot, Coodam, MobileCDN, Wharfedale Technologies, and Xora are a part of the vast list of clients that the company has catered to. For DbyDx, U.S. is the target market that contributes about 90 percent of the company’s revenue. The remaining 10 percent comes from Europe and a small part from Australia. The Board of Directors, which comprises of HSB and IIT alumni, is highly positive about the future of the company. What was started with an angel investment from IIT and Harvard Business School alumni is now growing by leaps and bounds. The company has been growing exponentially in the last four years. Even during the current economic downturn, the company registered a growth of 152 percent. “The alumni network of the IIT and HBS helped us a lot in the initial years. This is where the strength of IIT comes in. Not only does it nurture the dream of the would-be entrepreneurs but it also gives them a strong support to rely on,” articulates Nitin. The company’s vision for the next five years is to become a 700-1,000 people company. At such a growth rate, it probably would be a mid-cap company by that time. The industry is moving very fast and it is a general perception that in the next 10 years more than 80 percent of the work will be done in technologies that do not exist today. This gives room for small but agile players like DbyDx to showcase their domain expertise and evolve as key players in the industry.