1. Would Stylusinc.com consider a strategic
alliance with an American or European company?
Dear Douglas,
Thanks for your interest in www.stylusinc.com. I am so curious about this
interest. I see the huge potential in a strategic alliance with our little
company but I wonder what others see. Perhaps since you are a global company
and also familiar with India then you have a bigger perspective. In any
case I will introduce our company and outline where we might be headed
and then perhaps you can let me know what you have on your mind.
We are a web development company located in India but serving clients
in Europe and the USA. We work via the Internet and have refined this
skill as the result of rarely meeting our clients. Our production team
consists of three designers and five programmers. We have a strong client
communication team to make sure the projects are running smoothly and
are meeting the client's needs.
Our whole 14-person team is very capable of developing a range of websites
and web products from simple sites to very complex database driven websites.
Our management team has recently talked about how an alliance might accelerate
our growth. We have therefore decided that in the next month we will actively
pursue alliances. It is too early for us to have planned this in detail.
At this point it is only an idea. The strategic direction of the company
is emerging as we are just now passing beyond the " start up"
phase. We are able to breath a sigh of relief and take the time to move
in the direction we choose.As part of this phase we are focusing on laying
the foundation of an Internet company. In other words, working on our
culture, values and vision. As part of this we are defining the type of
people to recruit and learning how to retain them. Our strategic direction
and tech direction is purposely somewhat fluid with an emphasis on moving
up the value chain in our services. We are also entering into web product
development and sales.
The area of our greatest strength is leadership and management. Our core
team is committed to our success and is more than capable of achieving
great things. They are forming a company on solid principles and hard
work. The track record of Stylus proves this. It depends on what you want
from an alliance with Stylus. In our eyes we see a lot of benefit. It
makes sense for an American company that wants to expand their services
without adding additional infrastructure and people costs. We have the
ability to scale in size and technology relatively quickly. In other words
we can find quality people with expertise in a range of technologies faster
than a company in the USA or Europe. I can give these obvious benefits
but until you tell me what you need then I need not go any further. I
hope this brief introduction helps you understand us and I look forward
to your response.
Sincerely,
Ralph Budelman.
2. How does a Norwegian Web Development Company start
and outsource relationship with www.stylusinc.com?
Dear Bjorn,
I am Ralph Budelman the Managing Director of Stylusinc.com. I just now
received your email. If you are a web developer we can help you expand
your business. Or we can do your web development at a lower cost here
in India.We are doing a similar thing with a web developer in Chicago
and another in Jordan. They are able to serve more clients at a lesser
cost. I doubt if their clients even know that we are doing the work.In
some cases we do only a portion of the project, say the database. In other
cases we may only do the design. We can do both. We work with Dreamweaver,
Fireworks Flash, ASP and SQL.
Our team now is three designers and five programmers. We also have three
people who are not in production but manage and build the team and communicate
with clients. If necessary I can ask one of them, Thomas Parackal (CFO),
to contact you. He will be able to answer the other questions in your
email. Most of our long term relationships with clients started in a small
way. In the same way I suggest that we start with a simple project and
let things grow from there.
Our company started almost two years ago with just three people we have
slowly grown to a total staff of 14. Besides growing in size we have grown
in our ability to produce quality results. We have done plenty of small
sites and have at least 30 customers. We are in the process of a major
site for an American client. Our programmers have been on this for a few
months and will finish soon. I hope this gives you a sense of who we are.
I will remain available to answer any of your non-technical questions.
Sincerely,
Ralph Budelman.
3. Do you want to build an outsourcing relationship
with a Swiss Company?
Dear Philipp,
I just got your email. Thanks for considering our services in India.
We can very definitely do you web database development work here (in India)
for much cheaper. Our team is competent in ASP and SQL. To see some of
our work you can go to indiawebdevelopers.com. The two websites www.stylusinc.com
and indiawebdevelopers.com are the same company.We are very happy that
you contacted us. We wanted to have this type of business relationship
with Switzerland. We have some friends here in Bangalore who are from
Switzerland so they helped us translate our homepage into German to target
the Swiss market. We know that your labor rates are high. We charge $25
per hour for database work. Our design work is $15 per hour.
We provide very good value and we will work hard to assure that you are
satisfied.We usually find that once people have tried our services they
return therefore we recommend that we start with a small project. Our
clients are in Hong Kong, USA, Sweden, UK and Australia.I hope this is
the start of a mutually beneficial relationship.
Sincerely,
Ralph Budelman.
4. Is Stylusinc.com willing to invest in dotcom projects
?
Dear James,
Thanks for contacting us about your Dubai travel site. We are interested
in helping you build this site. We use Microsoft technology
And can do a good job for a reasonable cost. I get the impression from
your email that you are asking us to invest our development time in exchange
for an equity position. This is possible. We could reduce our fees slightly
in exchange for some equity. Off course this would assume that the projects
are as good as you anticipate.
You mentioned that you want to get an idea of the viability from a tech
perspective. I suggest that you call KC George on his cell phone 91 98450
24119. He leads the development of some of our complex projects. I doubt
if I would be able give you the answers you need. In addition I am asking
Thomas Parackal to contact you via email. He is the CFO of Stylus and
is the best person to negotiate a deal. I will remain available for any
non-technical questions. I hope we can develop a mutually profitable relationship.
Sincerely,
Ralph Budelman.
5. Is it necessary to meet you before starting a
project?
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your prompt response. I agree that in some cases it would
be beneficial to meet personally so that there is a clear communication.
However since we only served international clients (as you would have
noticed from our site) you are our first Indian client. This is useful
to you, since we compete on a global level, you can be assured of high
quality. But, in keeping with our business model, we do not have field-marketing
staff. All our worldwide business takes place on the Net, and hence we
have developed our systems to such an extent that we are able to keep
our clients up to date on our progress just through the Internet.
Our questionnaire contains the questions that are the basis for any RFP
(request for proposal) internationally. Moreover, being based in Bangalore,
keeping a marketing staff means adding to our overheads, which in turn
means higher costs for our clients. I hope that I have been able to explain
our situation. If you already have an existing proposal detailing your
requirements, you may sand that as an alternative. Thank you for taking
the time to reply to my earlier mail.I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Vinny Alex
6. I am an American, how do I set up an office in
Bangalore?
Dear Keith,
Hope you are getting ready to enjoy Christmas. My family will be going
out for dinner on Christmas Day.Now to answer your questions about setting
up an office here.If you are mainly looking for info about setting up
an entity then perhaps I should refer you to my accountant. He can tell
you your options.
The opportunities are changing and improving as the government moves to
make it easier to what you want to do.It seems to me the key thing is
to find the right person to head it up or did I understand your email
to say you already have someone there with you.This person can easily
set everything up and hire the right people. It is my guess that you will
run into plenty of trouble but in the long run it will prove to be a fantastic
decision and you will have great success. Of course I am an optimist.The
fact is there are many really great people here who can easily do this
work for you. It will be a win for you and a win for India. Let me know
what else you need.
6a.
Dear Duncan,
You wrote:
"My office is considering in some way investing in the Internet access
business in India so I'd love to get the latest statistics about the names
and number of subscribers of the leading Internet service providers (ISPs).Thank
you very much."
I can't help much but I will give you some sketchy info.. There are probably
100 ISP in India maybe more. The big ones include: Satyam, Mantra, Pacific
Internet and Caltiger. I saw a list once in a recent Indian computer magazine.
I have heard that there are about 1 million people connected to the Internet.
But I am not sure if that means users or subscribers. One limitation is
phone lines. There may only be 20 million phone connections. The number
of Internet users may double every year for the next few years.
