Raju Vegesna, Chairman and Managing Director of Sify Technologies shares his views on how he transformed India’s first private ISP to an information, communication and technology (ICT) company since he took over the reigns. Excerpts:

Q] When you start a company with a vision, you can develop it fast. You acquired a stake in Sify in 2005, and have been reorganizing the business since then. How has been the journey?
One cannot change a company in a jiffy. Sify started as an ISP in the nineties, and this is what I call the phase one of the company till the time I acquired a majority stake in 2005.

We saw a huge opportunity in the enterprise space, both large and SME customers. We ventured into this market, and were able to create a strong foothold. Today, 90 percent of business comes from the domestic enterprise segment. This was the phase two of the company.

We are now in the third phase where we have transformed ourselves into an information, communication and technology (ICT) company. To achieve this goal, we have set up data centres, and identified services such as network, IT and software that can be offered for our enterprise customers.

We have one of the biggest MPLS networks in the country, and in the next 12 months you will see substantial aggressiveness from us. Today we cover more than thousand cities and towns across India with more than 1500 base stations, which we are planning to double in the next 12 months. We are also laying fibers in major cities to provide the requisite bandwidth. This is in terms of connectivity point of view.

Q] You have announced the operational readiness of the undersea cable landing system in Mumbai. How do you plan to leverage this for business users?
This landing station is very important for connecting India with the rest of the world. With this launch we can provide telecom operators and other communications companies, both in the region and globally, with greater choice, value, diversity and resilience.

With the technology in place, India can look to become the cloud hub of the world by taking advantage of this landing station. We will be connecting developing countries like the Middle East and Africa. These two regions have a great potential for our IT companies.

As a company we look forward to partnering with telecom service providers and playing a larger active role in the communication revolution that is unfolding in the Asia Pacific region, Middle East and Africa.

Q] How do you see the corporate IT spending this year? Many analysts predict a crunch in IT budgets due to the uncertainty in the Eurozone and US.
For me IT is a tool to get companies more business, reduce costs and be efficient. Economic recession versus IT usage is two different things. There is still a strong demand and buying for IT in the country despite the slowdown.

Q] Majority of your business comes from India. Is the company planning to expand its presence in other markets?
Yes, today most of the business is within the country. However, we want to go to new markets. We are looking at opportunities in developing countries like Africa, Asia and the Middle East.