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June - 2005 - issue > On The Cover
@Road on Course
Robin Joseph Mathews
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Jane Smith, a subscriber of British Gas, in Europe is happy and delighted with the company’s gas installation and repair service. She not only gets things done fast and on time, but also at greater flexibility and timely service from the installation technician.

It was surprising because she was used to technicians either coming late or even not showing up! The timely service has increased the customer rating for British Gas. How did this happen? The secret lies with Mobile Resource Management—an innovative way of putting people and work together. And all this real time, at the cost of the provider and comfort of the customer!

Yes, that’s the MRM technology Krish Panu’s AtRoad is building; “Changing the way consumers are going to experience the future,” Panu says. In an era of intense competition, providing timely service can give a company a big leap. “With tens of millions of mobile workers in the U.S., we believe there is a multi-billion dollar market potential for MRM services. We have realized only a small portion of the market potential for MRM solutions,” says Panu.

Research house Frost and Sullivan estimates MRM will be a $1 billion business by 2007. Since the market is still in its early stage of adoption, AtRoad clearly has a leadership position with a scalable business model. “A model that not just makes money but also solves the customer problems,” says Panu. “There is a real world problem of solving the need that customers are facing. AtRoad demonstrated large corporation and fortune 100 customers, who have used our technology, as to what that need is. Through which their productivity has increased by 18-20 percent in industrial workforce.” AtRoad is the current leader in the sector with marquee customers such as SBC, Verizon, British Gas, and Quest Communications.

But all good things don’t have a good start. Panu, 46, previously had the opportunity and experience of working with a billion dollar chipmaker Atmel, where he headed the logic division. His determination and grit had in fact raised Atmel from $ 50 million to a $ two billion company—Atmel was one of the fastest growing billion-dollar companies. And his logic chip making division was the backbone. Interestingly, one of the directors of Atmel offered Panu the opportunity to head Vectorlink a company developing GPS technology. Panu took the challenge to live his dream of heading a company and as the head of Vectorlink re-christened it as AtRoad, of course, helping develop further technologies.

Technology in Silicon Valley was perhaps the most accepted thing in 1998. “There were VCs to pour money wherever the market was and there was market everywhere,” he says modestly. But the real thing was that, Panu worked on a technology for the future and no one could over look the futuristic fact. He reminisces, “I said then, software is not going to be sold as a license model, but as service on demand model.” Soon after, Panu started AtRoad and displayed his technology to the VCs; he received investments totaling $85 million from Institutional Venture Partners and U.S Venture Partners, Intel, Hitachi, CAPCO and ABS Capital. And again raised a $61 million in its public offering in August 2000.

Within four months of going public the markets crashed. “It was like Indiana Jones, I got the first stock and the glory was going out,” explains Panu. However, now in retrospect Panu calls it a glad occasion. “Although we took a beating, we never lost focus in our mission,” he says. AtRoad was a company building solution to solve the next wave of challenges to be faced by enterprises.

Panu’s experience in being a part of building a company in his previous jobs made him promote a culture of invention among his employees. Since, his first day he invested in systems upfront. “We invented interesting ERP, and automated sales processes,” he says. But in those days, such things were built only for large enterprises. However, Panu says, “I believed in my business and always thought my company is going to be long-term player, so our inventions were obvious. When you do the fundamentals right then everything comes in your way.” AtRoad did the ERP, communication and automation systems while structuring the company.

As the infrastructure was built, Panu found a challenging task of recruiting a high-adrenalin and dedicated team. With great involvement into the HR side of the company, he hired a very strong and experienced management team, which believed in goal setting, reviews, and accountability. “Once you have A+ players they will move ahead and hire good players downwards. We started it slowly and keep expanding it,” says Panu.
As the company built its team and technology, customers flowed in. Today, the number of mobile resources enabled with AtRoad’s solutions has grown from 135 in 1998 to approximately 133,000 as of 2004. “Our success depends upon the ability to develop new solutions and enhance existing solutions. If we cannot deliver the features and functionality our customers demand, we will be unable to retain or attract new customers,” admits Panu.

“Customers pay as they go and we get the benefit every month,” says Panu. “As you layer on more subscribers, it becomes a cash-generating profitable business.” Initially, as the numbers of subscribers grew, so did the company’s bottom line. But the trend in the industry started shifting from post subscription to a combination model. However, Panu’s belief in his technology and the subscription model has worked. “Customers don’t have a capex spending for such technology deployment and integration. And most often certain applications are computer intensive,” says Panu. So today Panu has developed a hybrid software model of his technology that is on demand and at some portions computer intensive and cost-effective to be in premise of the customers. “This is what everyone around the world wants,” says Panu.

With a net income of $9.2 million in 2004 compared to $1.7 million in 2003, AtRoad is on course. Total revenues in 2004 were up 19 percent to $75.2 million from $63.4 million in 2003. Analysts point out that AtRoad will continue to be profitable because of the business model. “We have a 100 million dollar business and it’s a functional business, it is recurring,” says Panu.

A promising new technology always invites competition, and AtRoad is no exception. Panu notes, “We face competition from internal development teams of potential customers, from existing and potential competitors, and if we fail to compete effectively, our ability to acquire new customers could decrease, our revenues would decline and our business would suffer.”

Everything may look rosy for a company with 133,000 customers. Analyst Brent Iadarola of Frost and Sullivan notes that AtRoad’s current base of large clients could turn out to be a weakness for the company. “They have come in at price points that tend to be higher, and there are a lot of off-the-shelf solutions aimed at small and medium businesses that come in at a better price,” Iadarola says.
For Panu money is not everything.

He says, “Money is important but when you are developing a cutting edge technology you need to have a team and that’s what we have in our company.” Perhaps the most challenging moment in Panu’s life was while selecting the right set of employees to build AtRoad. “If you don’t have the right set of team then you will lose out,” he warns. Panu with his hands on leadership has built a great team and created micro management across different departments.

He talks about communication as a soul of any organization, “As an organization gets bigger, the communication mechanism has to change, it becomes more formal,” he says. AtRoad has been running under the same management since its $0 to now a near $100 million in revenues. Panu has always chosen employees asking them to be better than him and replace him in short time. “If you don’t promote the person, then you don’t promote the company or the team,” he says. Panu values his HR managers as much as VPs of other operations. He believes that HR managers don’t just maintain the human resource, but also contribute to an organizational behavior and development.

Panu even sought a HR cum technical person to head his India office as a country manager. And today all his HR managers report directly to him—pretty unusual in other companies. “Because employees are our main resource,” he says. Every time he tells us about his employees, he also explains the importance of communication in company. “Many companies don’t survive because of insufficient communication,” he says. At AtRoad the frequency of communication is novel factor. “Every quarter there is an update that comes from my management team. We conference with each department in India, England and our team here,” he says. Each department VPs discuss with department directors and the directors in turn to their team, in a cascading manner.

In the last two years, AtRoad’s business has picked up at great pace and there is lot of employee trainee programmes like the leadership forum, people management and so on. Such exercises and the company culture have today kept Panu’s company at No.1 position in various media. But as Eli Stanley Jones, a well-known Christian evangelist says, “Growth in life is life’s greatest adventure.” Panu for sure is growing with AtRoad!
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