Divyesh Kharade, Jinen Dedhia and Akash Shah founders Deltecs Infotech Pvt Ltd
Wednesday September 30, 2009 , 4 min Read
Founded in February 2007 by Divyesh Kharade, Jinen Dedhia and Akash Shah, Deltecs Infotech is on a mission provide innovative and practical solutions to meet the challenges of learning and training, imparted through mobile phones and desktops.
Deltecs was born out of a desire to create opportunity and employment, and with an urge to give something valuable to the world, to make a difference in people’s lives.
The trio funded the creation of Deltecs by themselves, but was fortunate to bag services-level projects as they started off. The latter ensure a cash flow that funded their operations with regard to their core products.
From initially working out of their homes, Deltecs first moved to modest, rented premises. The firm now encompasses a state-of-the-art management office, a development centre, conference room and other infrastructure, with 14 employees in a single branch.
The team at Deltecs now functions like a family; each member believes in a single vision and works dedicatedly towards realising it. This has enabled the firm to overcome the challenges faced by a start-up, which, for them, change at every step.
“Entrepreneurship is all about tacking and overcoming the challenges, from funding to the setting up of an office, choosing an initial set of people to start off with, building the core team and setting up the processes. Motivating the team and keeping everyone focused have been challenges at times, but overcoming these is fairly easy when the goals and objectives are set,” says Kharade, director of products and innovation at Deltecs.
Early work in the direction of their firm, including incubation of the idea, began in October 2005, involving key members from Wipro Technologies. In a short span of time, Deltecs became involved in business with blue-chip companies, either partnering them or providing solutions for them.
From starting off with a couple of learning applications as freeware and with revenue drawn from advertisements, Deltecs gradually moved on to paid mobile learning applications with premium content in the business-to-consumer segment.
The company is currently present across both the business-to-business (b2b) and business-to-consumer (b2c) segments. In the latter, it has more than 10,000 customers using its mobile learning applications for the Common Admission Test (CAT) organised by the Indian Institutes of Management, the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and other competitive examinations. These are supplied under the brand name of m.a.d. and TopCAT, the latter offered in association with Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
In the b2b segment, Deltecs provides platforms for corporate firms, institutes and universities across the globe, to convert their digital content into mobile learning applications. These services are being offered to clients as diverse as Wipro, the Indian Railways and Navneet Publications.
Deltecs’s latest tool, DRONA, is a mobile learning authoring tool, which transforms learning content into mobile applications to be distributed, tracked and analysed, with minimum effort and time.
DRONA is offered in the b2b segment and has the option of used-, time- and quantum of usage-based licensing, while Deltecs offers support and maintenance packages to supplement the same. In addition, the product has different functionalities in order to cater to the different needs of the diverse clientele, such as academic institutions and corporate firms.
Deltecs plans to enhance its offerings in the corporate sector by next introducing a plug-in for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, DRONA-BES, which will enable BlackBerry-based training for corporate clients. In the b2c segment, it will soon launch its TopUPSC products for candidates of the civil services examinations, again in association with Tata McGraw-Hill. The firm is also looking to establish a retail presence across India.
Kharade, Dedhia and Shah have received ample recognition for their efforts with Deltecs. The company was listed among the hottest start-ups in 2008 by Tata NEN. This year, it is the only firm from India among the finalists for an award for innovation in handheld learning to be presented at a ceremony in London.
Prior to these, they won the B-Plan competition at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad in 2008 and stood fifth in the Asia Moot B-Plan Contest the same year.
Their success has also been highlights in their revenue, which was a modest Rs4 lakh in the first year of operation. This grew to more than Rs20 lakh in the second and is expected to rise significantly this year too.
Their next aim is to introduce a strong system for feedback and analysis, which will make the quality of teaching better, an endeavour for which yourstory.in wishes them the best.
