by Deepta Rangarajan (IRIS)

"There is nothing like a dream to create ... Some think it was easier then and others
think it comes easy now. ... Deepta Rangarajan Co-founder. IRSI Batch 1989 ...

It is so true working for a while really makes so much of difference before you
start your own enterprise. It doesn’t matter where you work. When you
actually work and you deal with nuances of day to day situations, decision
making and dealing with people, you imbibe a knowledge which is really
helpful when you start being an entrepreneur basically.

I think, for us, much of what have done has not followed a well scripted plot.
And this could be true for several entrepreneurs. You work with a board game
plan. Depending upon the availability of resources and the opportunities that
present themselves at each point in time, you flexibly modify your plans and
move along. You alter. But you ensure that you keep moving broadly in the
direction that you want. If you say, this is my scripted plan, this is what I am
going to do, if it does not end up happening as per that script, you will be
tremendously disappointed.

On the other hand, if you are open and flexible, you will have opportunity that
you never even thought of. There was nothing called XBRL when we started,
and it is becoming a huge opportunity. Like a colleague of mine was saying,
you need to keep the sails open and then wait for the wind to blow.

One has to have a creative streak if one needs to be an entrepreneur. A

strong desire to want to create something and to make that happen.

While we are not tremendously greedy, we don’t constantly compare our net
worth with somebody else. Having said that, it is fantastic to create wealth.
Because often, it is not only an endorsement of that fact that you have done
well, it gives you tremendous opportunity to do other things as well.
Why so few women entrepreneurs? I think a woman has to do with the fact
that women have primary responsibility for the children and family. If you have
primary responsibility for caring for your family and you want to be an
entrepreneur, in terms of balancing life, you could do something more cottage,
may be from home. If I had kids I would definitely re-size and re-scale the way
I could be involved with the company.
IRIS: Spearheading XBRL in Indian Financial Sector
January 09, 2009

IRIS is a pioneer in XBRL technology in India. It has been instrumental in

developing the XBRL taxonomy for Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Institute of
Charted Accountants of India (ICAI). IRIS has Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and
National Stock Exchange (NSE) as its customers. We bring to you this story on IRIS
as promised in our introductory article on ‘XBRL: The Technology for Business
Reporting’ in November ‘08 issue. CRO talks to Balachandran, co-founder, chief
financial officer (CFO), and head of information and research delivery operations at
IRIS, on the beginning and development of XBRL adoption in India, with special
emphasis on the RBI and ICAI XBRL projects.

Increased transparency is one of the tenets of global compliance movement. Indian

regulators like RBI and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) have
recognized the importance of XBRL technology to ensure reliability, accuracy and
easy access to business data, and also its ability to act as a powerful tool for
compliance reporting. XBRL has finally found its way to the Indian financial sector.

Balachandran is the
co-founder of IRIS and
heads the information
and research delivery
operations at IRIS. He
also spearheads the
XBRL initiative at IRIS
and is the director on
XBRL India. Prior to
founding IRIS, he was
with CRISIL as group
leader and senior analyst.
He has also worked for a
short stint in his initial
career with Tata
Economic Consultancy
Services as a business
economist. He holds a
graduate degree in
chemical engineering
and an MBA from Indian
Institute of Management,
Bangalore.

XBRL in Indian bourses

Both leading stock exchanges of India, BSE and NSE have migrated to XBRL from
the paper based model and offer a unified electronic platform, popularly known as
‘CorpFiling’ system, which enables the companies listed in either or both of the
exchanges to electronically file their disclosures. CorpFiling is a common filing
portal based on ‘iFile’ solution of IRIS. Approximately 100 top companies of India
are using CorpFiling XBRL platform for filing mandatory information. BSE had
played an important role in the initiation of XBRL reporting platform in India. It was
the first one to formally adopt XBRL. It was also the first Indian customer of IRIS
followed by NSE, to use its XBRL based solution. ‘It all started off in December
2005 when we met Rajnikant Patel, who was then the CEO and director of BSE, at
XBRL technology conference in New Delhi,’ recounts Balachandran. This was
India’s first conference on XBRL, supported by XBRL International Consortium,
Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), Institute
of Cost and Works Accountants of India (ICWAI) and Inter-Connected Stock
Exchange of India Ltd (ISE), he says. Soon thereafter, IRIS had talks with BSE
which finally materialized into its first XBRL project in India. In this project, IRIS
had developed Indian Corporate Electronic Reporting System (ICERS), its first
XBRL solution for BSE. ICERS was developed as an end-to-end application
enabling the companies listed on BSE to submit their filings over Internet. It also
allowed the online verification of the filing by BSE and immediate dissemination of
the data to the public. How difficult was it to bag the first XBRL project and to
IRISwinsNASSCOM'ssocialinnovationaward!
convince BSE about the technology? ‘Patel was aware of the important implications
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of the technology and BSE was also looking for an electronic platform at that time,’
responds Balachandran. ‘We had an added advantage since IRIS was the only Indian
company in 2005 BIGthat
STARhad AwardsbyIIM
done reasonableAhmedabad
amount of work and had knowledge and
expertise in the field’.
'Estetica' Awards .
How IRIS started working on XBRL
When IRIS was formed 14 years ago, its main focus was on becoming a leading
information and research company for financial markets. Balachandran explains how
it gradually transformed into an XBRL technology solutions company. The company
was founded in 1994 by Swaminathan, Deepta Rangarajan and Balachandran.
Swaminathan, the chief executive of IRIS is an economist trained at Yale University.
He worked with World Bank as aMyiris.com consultant beforeis India's leading
returning personal
to India. While Deepta
and Balachandran were with Credit Ratingdestination,
finance Information Services of India Limited
where people
(CRISIL) as financial analysts, Swami research worked with and
stocks leading Indianfunds
mutual publications,
Economic Times and Business India beforefor atransacting
brief period, in
before
them they all cameantogether
through
to start IRIS. Both Deepta and Balachandran are chemical
intermediary of their choice. engineering graduates and
hold an MBA from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and Bangalore
respectively. ‘We started this company as an independent research and information
firm focused on the capital market side,’ informs Balachandran. In the beginning, myiris.com, India`s
IRIS essentiallyleading
worked personal finance side,
on the information destination,
building awas launched
database in 1999 and is widely used by
and sending
retail investors with an interest in Indian markets.
customized information to institutions, he says. Much before its foray into XBRL We have recently launched myiris
technology it built
plus,anainvestment
first of itsportal. ‘In fact webased
kind desktop happened to be firstwhich
application company in users to aggregate
allows
India investing and
in this technology. It is a popular media portal launched in 1999
manage their financial statements, tax filings and more from their desktops.
called myiris.com used by people in investing industry,’ says Balachandran. The
Flexible
main focus of IRIS remains and highly
in the area ofresponsive
investment market as it manages financial
Withwebsites.
information related a team Sincesize of 260it and
2000 growing,
has been we are
providing webhighly
related flexible and responsive to client
technology solutions and tools toWe
requirements. its have
clientsdeveloped
from investment
manymarket. ‘We
firsts in thealso do markets, including
Indian
research work for companies
Corpfiling, thebutCommon
not much.Electronic
Profits haveFiling
been Platform
more on this forside of listed on the BSE and
firms
our business forNSE;
the last three to four years,’ he admits.
the first XBRL based corporate database, and the first of its kind desktop
application that facilitates account aggregation, tax planning and more
How did IRIS move to XBRL technology?
‘As we are on information
Thoroughside, we work in tandem
understanding with the financial
of information industry and
management
report the emerging trends in this field,’ explains Balachandran. ‘This is how XBRL
Information management involves an approach of integrity and rigor to information,
came on our radar relatively early. We knew that a standard like XBRL would make
an ability to identify and map processes for managing different types of information
a huge impact in the information industry, not only in India but across the globe. We
sets, use of technology from the stage of data capture through to structuring,
started working on XBRL almost immediately then.’ Beginning end-2004 and in
analysis, processing
2005, IRIS made huge investments intoand
this delivery.
technologyWe andhave honed
got on board these skills over the years, and
our abilitychartered
professionals, essentially to manage information
accountants has been
and software used who
engineers by clients
learnt in the financial market
the technology space, as well
developing as in manufacturing,
the expertise retail and The
on the XBRL taxonomies. other industries.
company
today has strength of 300 employees out of which a significant percentage is
dedicated to theEffective
XBRL domainuse and
of technology
technology. It has presence in USA and Europe,
using its XBRLIRIS’ proprietary
solutions and highly
and information. IRISflexible
has alsocontent management
closely worked with solution allows us to
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its filings and also helped it to
create the largest repository of XBRL instance documents in the US. With
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) coming into picture, the pace of
XBRL adoption across the globe is bound to be rapid and vast, says Balachandran.
‘Though the pace of adoption could vary in each country depending on its
have a continued growth and that is the area where we would be focusing on,’ he
informs.

‘iFile’ and ‘FinX’ are the two major XBRL solutions developed by IRIS based on
Microsoft’s .NET framework. iFile, the XBRL-enabled workflow solution is mainly
designed for electronic submission and filing of information. As a reporting software
capture,
solution it offers manage
a framework and consume
that facilitates datavalidation,
collection, in multiple formats, build customized validation
storage,
submission, review
rulesandanddissemination of information
present content filedformats.
in multiple by the regulated
We have entities.
built a number of adapters
‘iFile’ was to take a holisticspecific
to handle approach to ensure a data
information sets,collection
and ourenvironment
effective usewithof smart technology,
appropriate validation
combined and work flow application
with skilled ensuring dataprovides
people resources, security to make the advantage to our
a significant
dissemination and assessment
customers. of information in a cost effective manner. The
modular feature of the solution makes it adaptable to any capital market regulatory
environment as it can be integrated with the existing systems and rapidly customized
to meet specific reporting and compliance needs. It has been deployed in India for
companies listed on BSE and NSE. It has also been customized for RBI for Basel II
reporting by banks.

FinX is other XBRL solution developed by the company that creates interactive
XBRL instance documents from unstructured and semi-structured data. Like iFile,
FinX also has the flexibility to be customised in any regulatory environment. It can
be configured to load any taxonomy enabling the XBRL document to be generated
from HTML, Word or Excel files. Apart from the above solutions, IRIS also
provides web services tools called ‘i-services’ which are used for data conversion
and end user applications. It allows customers to receive the information into their
applications directly, and in the templates they desire.

RBI project for Basel II reporting

To attune to the new XBRL based reporting standards, legal and regulatory changes
are required. SEBI has been instrumental in driving the cause, with its mandate
issued over a year ago for select companies to submit their financial statements
through the Corporate Filing and Dissemination System (CFDS) starting in the first
phase in 2008. Recently, RBI has also moved to XBRL based electronic filing
system for the Basel II reporting by banks. The filing system uses iFile solution for
the banks to submit their returns for capital adequacy returns data through the
existing Online Filing Return System (OFRS). To begin with, RBI has selected a
few commercial banks that would participate in the implementation of this project.
The project has been divided into three distinct phases. Commenting on the selection
process for the RBI’s contract Balachandran says, ‘We started working on RBI’s
XBRL project from January 2008, much before its launch. We had meetings and
presentations with the RBI’s Steering Committee chaired by the deputy governor, V
Leeladhar. The contract for the first phase of the project was awarded to us in May
2008. We won the contract against many large consulting firms, essentially the
foreign companies with production and support hubs in India, which bid for the
tender issued by RBI along with us’.

What were the factors that helped IRIS win this order?
‘Our expertise in the domain and technology, and our ability to provide a quick
solution which is also economically priced, was the key to winning this contract,’
asserts Balachandran. The first phase of the project mainly includes the XBRL based
filing of Form A return. The other two phases cover the financial statements like
balance sheets, cash flows etc. With the first phase of the XBRL implementation
already over, other two phases are expected to be completed by the end of March
next year. IRIS intends to extend its iFile solution for banks to facilitate their
reporting on assets and liabilities, balances, gaps, positions and annual financial
returns.

A developing concept
The concept of XBRL is still at a nascent stage in India and more so in banks. The