COVER STORY

BETTING ON A

BIGGER PIE OF

MOBILE APP

MARKET
A
By Anamika Sahu

Kishore Khandavalli
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October 2012

person from rural part of southern India and

the son of a timber merchant, a dreamer and
a doer, a person who is known as a horse in
the industry whom you can bet on everyday
of the week, Kishore Khandavalli, CEO of
Seventablets can be credited for more than this. He not only
dared to start a technology company, iTech US, during the
time of recession, but succeeded in making it to the list of
top growing companies in New England. iTech is a custom
software services and solutions company offering services
to the Fortune 500 companies like Pepsi, Bally, DIRECTV,
eBay, IBM, Microsoft and several others. And he has triggered the pistol again yet by entering into another hot sector, the Mobile Space with his app development company
Seven Tablets.
With an escalating demand of the mobile app market
where every player had one or the other app to offer its
clients, Kishore found that there is a dearth for the enterprise app market specifically developed for every particular client who can directly download and use it according to
their need. The clients are also looking for simplicity,
choice and customer engagement along with continuous appreciation in the client value. He wanted to bridge this gap
with his new venture Seven Tablets whose success he can
bet on without any clients and no apps in pocket. But, how
can he still do so?

The success of iTech gave him the gut

feeling that he can repeat the success
and create a history again. Kishore
wishes to do so by tapping in the experienced executives and satisfied
clients from iTech and with two-way
strategic approach that he has framed
for the resources end.

The THRASH about

Kishorebelievesthat
beingthenewestspace;
mobileapp
developmentneeds
cuttingedgecreative
ideas.Hewishestohave
acreativeteambetween
theagegroupof17-25
years
Things started aligning since he
came to the U.S. from India at the age
of 23 with his young dream of making it large in the country. After a fiveyear long job, he started his first
venture PrimeSoft in 1998. Since
then, he never looked back and in a
span of 15 years of his entrepreneurial
journey, he merged his company with
Glodstone Technologies, a public
company based out of India, and was
the CEO for the combined entity. Two
years later, due to issues relating to
core value and ethics, he parted ways
from Goldstone.
With an entrepreneurial experience of 4-5 years, I started iTech with
four core values. Transparency: to
clients, employees, vendors and partners alike; Integrity: stay true to your
words, say what you are going to do,

do what you say; Driven: I have come

all the way out of India with good and
not so good times, this is the driving
factor that I want to nourish in my
company; and Compassionate: to accomplish whatever we promise to our
clients, says Kishore Khandavalli,
CEO, iTech US and Seven Tablets.
His new venture, Seven Tablets will
inherit and work on these four core
values.
The mobile industry is a fast-growing
market, not just for smartphones and
devices, but also for the applications.
Industry analysts predict that the mobile app market will grow up to $36.7
billion by 2015, and Gartner says that
the market will reach $29.5 billion by
2013.
With such huge opportunity in the
market, Kishore has plans to offer
custom apps for Fortune 2000 clients
through Seven Tablets which was
born out of a mobile conference that
he attended in 2011 in California.
The U.S. has several small mobile development companies, lots of
them 20-30 people range and most of
them are 2-3 years old. These companies either focus on services approach
which the client wants in app development, i.e., custom app; or small
shops that develop apps and upload in
app stores as free apps and they have
a great business model, adds
Kishore.
The company is also developing
its own enterprise apps and will be
one of the first in the market to start
downloading enterprise app to enable
its corporate clients to download those
apps and start using them for their internal process.

The birth of Seven Tablets

Kishore bets that if one looks at his

companys website, he will know that
it is a peoples company. He has a philosophy that he doesnt hire people for
a position, but he sees either talent or

The Peoples company

loyalty in a man or woman. We do

not sell any physical products other
than creating software. We are a team
of people with strong core values and
this is a big differentiator, explains
Kishore. Today iTech, the flagship
company, does strategic consulting,
software development, staffing and
data services out of India. With its two
off-shore centers and 500 employees
out of India and around 700 in the
U.S., his global team stands abide
with the core value of the company.
This team has created a success story
for iTech and now it is their turn for
Seven Tablets.
We all know that the mobile market
entails a good business opportunity. If
you have the right approach, tools and
solutions, the business will grow and
no one can deny this. But the biggest
challenge in the mobile space in particular is the Talent. As this is a new
industry in itself, we do not have
enough mobile development talent
available and those who are have already been taken, there is a huge competition for them, explains Kishore.
He wants to position his company
Seven Tablets in the near term as a
completely U.S. based solution
provider company and not to take it
offshore. He feels that there is a niche
need in the industry in the creative
side and the user interface front of it,
and wants to tap into the U.S. clients
with American creative side rather
than developing creative user interface from overseas. This will be our
value differentiator when compared to
our competitors. I believe that the user
interface, graphics and color scheme
in a particular place is different from
another, and not that one is better than
the other. I want to position Seven
Tablets as a high-end app development company and my biggest challenge is to get or attract talent as the
mobile space is competing for it,
adds Kishore.

The Manpower Dearth

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October 2012

But the challenge still remains. The

young folks may not know exactly
what you want, as they do not have the
consistency and maturity level that
one gets from the seasoned employees.
Engaging employees at such a young
age is a risky proposition. While fully
aware of the risks, Kishore still bets on
this format. I do not know how their
longevity and commitment is going to
be as at this young age as one wants to
explore a lot of thing when they are
young, hitches Kishore.
The shipping of mobile and tablets
has surpassed that of PCs, and like
many others, Kishore also feels that in
next 3-5 years, the laptop is going to
become obsolete. The world will be either tablets or hand-held device driven
and this is the time to click the right
target. And with the existing client
base in iTech, Kishore plans to tap his
existing clients and offer the solutions
to these satisfied and well known
clients.
The industry is changing rapidly
and everything will be done at a faster
pace. Even though Kishore has a team
in place, he has to deploy apps from
start to finish in anywhere between 90180 days, a time frame long enough to
allow another shift in technology.
What we envision today as a user interface as a mobile app, it may change
six months from now, so what we developed for the older version needs to
be updated for the current version and
that is the challenge. With so many
hardware suppliers releasing a new
mobile hardware every other week, the
biggest challenge for us is to make sure
that my app is working properly on all
those devices, explains Kishore.
Seven Tablets is focusing a lot on the
front end and creative side of it. It cannot bear to have less and imperfect interface on any mobile device.
Kishore is not afraid of the competition but knows how important it is to
keep him and his company abreast
with the latest technologies relative to

Challenges

Howyougetaheadis
howyoucreatea
dierentiator.
Wedoitbytalkingthe
talkandwalkingthe
walk

He plans a two-way strategic approach to overcome this challenge.

With the available manpower resources that he holds in iTech, he
plans to tap and use them by providing training in the mobile space.
Seven Tablets has already identified
two partners, IBM and Motorola.
IBM has a mobile platform and we
are the only partner at the moment. I
want half of my employees to be
trained in IBM platform and other half
in Motorola. This team will be working for the core iTech, but when I get
business in Seven Tablets, I will migrate the iTech legacy business into
Seven Tablets, explains Kishore.

The Two-way approach

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October 2012

The second strategic move that he

has taken is to recruit fresh talent from
high school senior level to undergrads
from college. He thinks that being the
newest space; mobile app development needs cutting edge creative
ideas. He wishes to have a creative
team between the age group of 17-25
years. This is where the fresh brain
and fresh talent is and this generation
has grown up with computers, mobile
phones and Xbox. On one side, I have
mature, seasoned individuals that will
be doing coding, architecture and deployment, and on the other side, the
younger generation will bring the creative side and the user interface, adds
Kishore.
He has finalized on two colleges
where he is going to set up RDCs (Remote Development Centers) offering
internships to students on his mobile
projects and mobile product developments. Kishore says, It is a win-win
proposition; tapping into the fresh talent and also getting work done which
addresses my resources issue. My seasoned team can make coding and software work and the fresh talent will
come up with creative ways of presenting it. Currently, Seven Tablets
has 20 employees and plans to grow
to around 150-200 in numbers in next
18 months.

Arealtimesolutionformedicalmanufacturers
One of the greatest challenges in the
mobile app development industry is to
introduce real-time innovation. Seven
Tablets is focused on innovative products
within the enterprise arena.
One of them is for the medical
manufacturing companies who are unable
to get consistent and accurate feedback
from physicians regarding the use of the
companys product in medical procedures.
They are dependent on such information
to constantly innovate things in their
industry. Using smartphones, physicians
are able to capture and log real-time data,
images and comments as they complete
cases and procedures during the day. This
real-time data is uploaded directly to a
centralized repository which the medical
manufacturer can review to monitor the use
of their products.
the competition. And that is why his
employees constantly undergo training
programs to update their skills at least
every six months.
How you get ahead is how you
create a differentiator. We do it by talking the talk and walking the walk. We
want to make sure whatever we have
developed or are developing is going
to look great on any interface and platform. We also have planned to establish similar partnerships such as Apple
to stay ahead of the curve. This is not
only with the hardware companies, but
also the software, explains Kishore.
Kishore has a strong clientele base in
iTech; most of them are Fortune 2000
companies. When all of them recognized the need to go mobile and expressed this desire, he planned to tap
them all into his Seven Tablets business. However, there exists a great
deal of uncertainty with most of the
companies on the exact path to get

The initial defy

Seven Tablets has come up with a real-time

solution to this issue. It has developed an app
that can also be used by physicians to keep
track of their daily case schedule and
communicate
diagnosis/procedure
information back to their administrative and
billing staff. The app also features an
Executive Dashboard that can be used on
Tablets or web browsers to monitor global
use of the companys products by geographic
regions, product types, procedures or
hospitals. The information gathered provides
valuable insight for product development
and marketing purposes.
The company primary focus is to develop
enterprise-grade Mobile App for corporate
clients. Additionally, it plans to develop its
own commercial mobile apps to be sold
through major app stores such as Apple
AppStore and the Android Market.

transitioned to mobile from client

server and web interfaces. No one is
sure on how to make the leap and what
platform to use, says Kishore. He
also does not have all the specific answers to these immediately but when
engaging with clients, he saw the business opportunity as every single company wants to beat their competitor
and reach their clients in the mobile
platform.
With the existing base of clients
from iTech, Seven Tablets is going to
provide them with certified mobile
folk either by IBM or Motorola or
both. The clients and the iTech team
are already known to each other and
the mobile product that Kishore will
propose to them will be internally developed. We do not have a fully developed custom app yet, but with our
approach and team, it is not too far,
explains Kishore.
Seven Tablets is in talks with its
existing clients focused on starting
custom development projects in the

next few weeks. It has a few products

developed but not yet deployed into
the app store which will be done in the
coming days. The clients may not have
a clear picture on the path they want to
take and it is Kishores job to mitigate
the risk and issues on how to do it.
Motorola and IBM will walk with him
in his first few implementations as
they already certified Seven Tablets.
Kishore knows that the first couple of
them will be the learning curves for
him, but he has put all measures and
staffs in place to move smoothly.
With the world eyeing the New Year,
Seven Tablets and Kishore eyes to release three products in enterprise
space and two custom apps for clients
along with at least one RDC at a college campus. He also will be expanding his team from 20 to about 40.
Kishore puts every move of his to get
a bigger pie of the cake of the mobile
app market. si

Roadmap ahead

siliconindia

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October 2012