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Partnership with a leading enterprise brings best practices

Ajit Nair founder, president and CEO, ProV
Minu Sirsalewala
DataQuest
Tuesday, April 18, 2006

How did ProV start? What is the funding received till date and the current holding pattern?

I was the CEO of Aces International, based in CA, and started ProV in 2003 end. ProV was funded by me. I own the firm 100% and may have an IPO in India in the next 1-2 years. ProV is an application development and systems integration company and its customers include Gap, Blue Cross Blue Shield, AT&T, Merrill Lynch, MCI, Sun Chemical, etc. It has grown at a tremendous rate since inception in March 2003 and has set up a development center in Mumbai, India.

What inspired ProV?

The success with Aces International-a small staff augmentation company, which I sold in 2003. In Aces, I saw the importance of a global workforce as a means of bringing high quality, high value services to IT consumers. I also understood its implications-a global workforce implied a 24-hour workday, which implied more rapid turnarounds as well as constant access for clients. Acting on this logic, I established both onshore and offshore development centers in Tampa, Florida and Mumbai, India, enabling accessible, collaborative application development. I also saw the advantage of close partnerships with leading enterprise software manufacturers, such as Siebel, SAP, and Oracle. This brings accepted best practices and best technologies to enterprise clients. Thus ProV was inspired.

What are your current revenues and how would you break it up between IT services and BPO?

ProV is just over two years old. We generated around $10 mn in 2005 and expect to reach $18 mn in 2006. ProV has grown well and have several Fortune 500 customers such as GAP, Williams Sonoma, Leap Wireless, Morgan Stanley, Dole etc. In 2005, ProV was selected by IT Florida as the Fastest Growing Technology Firm in Florida. The award was called 'High Growth' firm of Florida.

What are your offerings on the software services side?

The services on the software side are focused around health care. We have a lot of expertise in areas such as customer enrollment, billing, service, and claims judication, medical informatics, Data Warehousing etc. Most of this work is done for health insurance firms and not for hospitals. Our domain expertise especially in the healthcare space has allowed us to bag clients such as Blue Cross of Florida, Kaiser Healthcare Services. Our top strategic clients are Kaiser Permanante in CA, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, CareFirst in DC, Horizon Blue Cross in NJ and Sun Chemical in NJ.

What is ProV's offshore strategy? In terms of offshore facilities in India and elsewhere, please elaborate on your offerings.
ProV's office in Mumbai focuses on lead generation, recruiting etc. ProV now uses two Indian firms based in Chennai to do our offshore projects. They are Megasoft for application development and Sify for infrastructure management. ProV will soon have a delivery center in India in 2006. We are also looking at Hungary, Poland for similar centers.

What is the most important factor for you at ProV?

Along with sharp business acumen, technology and domain expertise, personalrapport with the customer is the fact that differentiates ProV from the other IT service providers. For ProV customer relation is single thing that tops the agenda. That is why the company has been able t foray into the space, which was otherwise dominated by the giants such as the Wipro or TCSs. In less than two years we have bagged large clients in the US who otherwise did not do business other than the likes of the TCS and Wipros of the world.