As the lead architect at Cisco Systems, Sridhar Krishnan built and launched the Service Contract Center that helped generate substantial revenues, enabling Cisco to capture a surprisingly large revenue stream. The success led Krishnan to recognize the value and industry-wide need for Service Life Cycle Management solutions, particularly in the area of services sales.

Krishnan founded Encover in 2000, to address the growing need of manufacturers and their resellers. For almost a year and a half, Krishnan and his team used the initial capital of $100 million to build pre- and post-sales tools that help companies to increase service revenue and also to manage customer relations.

“The companies we have been working with are telling us that they are losing up to half of their service revenue because of manual and antiquated processes. Our solutions demonstrate how 'service' could potentially be a high-margin source of revenue,” says Krishnan.

With the product in place, Krishnan is now focusing on sales. So far, Encover has only two customers—Juniper Networks and Terix Computer. “On the sales front, we need to put the processes in place, build the pipeline and manage the sales force,” notes Krishnan. The company recently appointed key sales and marketing executives to further the success of its products.

Encover also received $6 million in financing from the venture capital firm Sigma Partners. The money raised will be used mainly for sales. “We have aggressive plans to increase the customer base. Our goal is to establish a good reference of clients. We want our customers to feel the return on investments on our software product,” says Krishnan.

Raising money in this economy has been tough for many companies. But for Krishnan it wasn't tough. “Only companies that have products that address business problems get funded. Companies that have products for mere technology adoption do not get funded,” remarks Krishnan.