iYogi to foray into India by March

iYogi, a company providing tech support to resolve day-to-day challenges faced by global customers, has come a long way in its six years of operations. After having tasted huge success with its platform iMantra, the company is looking at a turnover of $100 million in the current fiscal. Vishal Dhar, president-marketing, iYogi, says the company is also looking at Europe and Asia to launch its services shortly. In an interview with Beryl Menezes, he shares an inside story.

What is the idea behind the iYogi service?
iYogi was started in 2007 as a consumer services brand to match the likes of Infosys and Wipro. The web portal basically provides tech support to the technically challenged and is based on a subscription model costing $169. Customers have a choice of subscribing to two packs — the home pack, which provides tech help to sync multiple devices used by all members of the household, or the individual pack, which provides support for a single PC and devices linked to that PC.

What kind of response has iYogi received?
What started out with revenues of $2 million in 2008 is growing at a rate of 300% year on year. For fiscal 2013, we are looking at crossing the $100 million mark. This is from a total tech support market of $40 billion worldwide. Also, while the US continues to be our primary market, we now operate in 10 countries worldwide. We now receive 20,000 in-bound service requests daily. We have also upgraded from supporting just 32 software applications when we started to support 320 software applications today. Support for the same is provided by 1,400 technicians in the US and our outsourcing partners like IBM, Genpact and Infinite, among others.

Any plans of an India launch soon?
Yes, we are planning to launch in India in the first quarter of 2013. We already have 5,000 tech support staff from India, who operate out of our centres in Gurgaon and Noida. We will be adding to this number with our India launch.

What scope do you see for the Indian market?
We are expecting 7-10% of our revenues to come from our India business. The channel to reach customers has become far more defined now. Internet and PC penetration is growing, and according to a recent survey we conducted, more than 64% of household bills are spent on communication, and each household has more than 11 devices. In six months, things will change in terms of a more developed device ecosystem, especially in terms of Android popularity and more user-friendly subscriber content. Our launch in India will start with services for small medium enterprises (SME) followed by a consumer launch later in the year. We expect to add at least 1,000 SME customers in India in our first year of operations.

What about expansion plans elsewhere?
We recently launched services in 6 GCC countries. Going forward, we are also looking to commence operations in Spain, France and Germany in Europe and Singapore and China – besides India in Asia. The China search numbers are growing faster than in the US, so we see a big potential there. Thus, we are expecting more growth from these new markets this year as compared to the US. In all these countries, we will provide local language support.

What is your current global customer base and by how much are you expecting it to grow in 2012-13?
With on-site services recently launched in the United States and new lines of business like digital home and consumer electronics like home theatre services added to our repertoire recently, coupled with launches in new geographies, including India and Europe expected shortly, we expect our user numbers to be close to 3 million by the close of 2012-13.

So what is your outlook?
We have three main plans. First, we are looking at multiple geographic expansion. Second, we aim to focus on small businesses, where we are seeing major scope in the form of rapid technology uptake like cloud, etc. And finally, we aim to innovate to capitalise on the mobility trend, which can be seen from rapidly changing consumer behaviour patterns.