Amit Agarwala, Founder, Amdale Software Technologies

Enabling Telecom Applications!

The advent of the “wireless telephone” has been one of the biggest revolutions, and has not only brought people closer, businesses have prospered, local boundaries have diluted. The growth of phone users has grown exponentially in just one decade, and today is just over the half way mark of the world population.

In entertainment starved markets, the phone has filled the gap, business users look upon their phone to add hours to their work life.

As time wears on, keeping in touch with friends & family has become a “given”. An industry almost by chance, the “telecom applications” market provides a lot more beyond basic call completion. But building these applications in the complex web of telecom technologies is anything but easy.

Amdale Software Technologies is a successful developer of a software platform (formally called a “Service Creation Environment” or “SCE”) that allows quick & easy development of such applications.

YourStory had a conversation with Amit Agarwala, the man behind this successful organization where he told us about his entrepreneurial yearning.

What is Amdale Software Technologies all about?

Amdale specializes in software products for telecom. A “telecom application” is everything apart from basic call completion. Meaning that connecting a call between you & me is “core telecom”. Outside of that most services require an application, whether serving the retail customers of a telco, enterprises, SME or anybody else who has a phone. Combining complex yet unified mix of rich media technologies video, voice, fax, SMS, email etc requires a lot of knowledge. Simplifying that is what Amdale software technologies is about.

What basic business idea ushered you towards Amdale?

When we started this business in1998, we found the market riddled with proprietary technologies, all dancing to their own tune.   Building telecom applications was a nightmare, quite like C/C++ days with Windows applications before VB & Java came along. Requiring extreme knowledge & tedious coding, there was always a shortage of applications.

“Simplicity” was our idea - to enable application developers in telecom do their work through a graphical interface, without having to deal with the complex technologies underneath. Basically hide telecom technology under the hood.

How easy it would be to build, host, scale complex applications was our litmus test.

How do your products help your clients?

PowerConnect™ is a pretty holistic tool for telecom application development. Its “simplicity” allows a person to build a telecom application in 2-3% of the time compared to coding for the same application.

Any mix of any number of simple or complex media PowerConnect™ does it all.

Tell us about your network of clients?

Amdale has two sets of customers – those who develop the applications & those who use them. In the latter category, all those who own a phone – whether enterprises or individuals. Everybody pays for information, productivity add-ons. important not note is that the application that works for me may not work for you; therefore speediness in building applications is very important. Speed is of essence is servicing these varied needs, where Amdale happily wins.

What sets you apart?

Stability, reliability, scalability & flexibility of applications built with our product PowerConnect™ are legendary.

We have deployments in more than twenty countries, four continents, and less than five support engineers! Being an India-developed product with Indian costs, we are able to make money where competition fails to.

We pursue software product path instead of software service. We partner with most leading SIs in the country in order to deliver applications, setting the standards in usability. Over time, it has turned out that PowerConnect™ leads innovation in this domain.

Why Entrepreneurship and why not a regular 9-5 job?

Where is this 9-5 job you talk about? In the pursuit of our ambitions, we all have swapped comfortable jobs with aggressive ones, those that can deliver the standard of living we expect out of life. I don’t think the game is about compromised “comfort”, rather what one does best.

For me, creativity, passion & innovation won over everything else. A less important fact - it is true that when we started Amdale, highly aggressive jobs were hard to come by, and I chose the path of entrepreneurship.

And, to be perfectly honest, I also didn’t know how easy or hard entrepreneurship was. It just sounded like a good idea.

In my personal experience, entrepreneurship is a tricky road, with many mirages on the road. After all these years, I am happy that I chose this. Now I wouldn't exchange this for the world. I am glad I didn’t know the struggle I would go through, else I may have been dissuaded before I even started!

What challenges did you face in your journey?

The biggest challenge was underestimating what it took to build a full-blown software product. Well, we stuck to our guns is what we did.

Any mistakes so far?

I’d need hundreds of fingers to count them all. The one that stands out is the hiring of middle to senior management. A total disaster it was, from all sides.

Future Plans?

We wish to lead the change towards “software products”.

Tell us about your achievements?

Amdale has had its share of achievements. We chose to grow organically for the first 4-5 years, in order to prove that our business model is sound. One of our fundamental beliefs is that while “money” can bridge a gap, it cannot fix a bad business model. Difficult years they were, but we succeeded. Today, a product we developed wholly in India is the pride of the Telecom market-place. The reliability & confidence of our partners & customers in our product is unmatched.

In the present scenario what according to you are the challenges that Indian entrepreneurs face?

Time, money & commitment. Building a business is a limited resource challenge. Whether competition is visible or not, there always is. The key challenge then is to realize your ideas within the time to beat competition, with the lowest cost in the industry.

Any tips for the coming generation of entrepreneurs?

Stay focused in good times as well as challenging times. Keep your eyes on the ball, believe in what you do, even when others don’t. Life itself evolves, and don’t hang on to an idea as if it’s the panacea for all mankind. Keep innovating, keep evolving. Plan & execute.

YourStory wishes Amit Agarwala and Amdale Software Technologies all the very best in what they desire.