Rise of software product companies Products
1980 Accelya Kale Solutions Ltd. founded
1982 Mastek and Cybermedia founded
1985 SOFTEK was the first company to develop compilers for COBOL, BASIC & FORTRAN for locally made computers
1990
1986 Nucleus Software founded Tally founded, first codeless accounting software
1992
SunTec founded
1993
A unit separated from CITIL, Citi group subsidiary. Later rebranded as i-Flex. Newgen founded
Quick Heal founded
1995 1996 Zoho founded
Infrasoft Tech founded
1997 2001
Kayko founded
i-Flex launched Flexcube for banks
2002 CRMnext founded i-Flex went public
2004 eka founded Rategain founded
2005 Zoho launched cloud based CRM Oracle acquired i-Flex
The product phase began as a breakaway of the GDM phase, some early employees from the IT services companies taking the plunge into entrepreneurship. However, the India was not mature enough as a market for such companies, especially in the early 1980’s, when a lot of the software product companies struggled for survival due to immature Indian markets being unable to absorb these companies’ products. While Tally was the first, homegrown software product company setup in India, way back in 1986, it was not till the early part of 1990s that we saw a multi-national company focusing in software products being setup. This started in earnest with a vital unit of Citi Corp group getting separated as CITIL which was later rebranded as i-Flex Solutions. The latter part of the decade saw i-Flex launch its flagship product FLEXCUBE which attained global recognition in a very short span of time. The first decade of the 21st century saw i-Flex going public, and just 3 years after its listing, i-Flex was acquired by Oracle, creating Oracle Financial Services. In the early days, the Indian product ecosystem was up against numerous challenges like rampant piracy and low customer adoption, which compelled Indian players to find a suitable market elsewhere. However, post the dotcom boom, improved connectivity enabled the origination of the SaaS (Software as a service) model. Zoho, a late 1990s establishment, launched its cloud (SaaS) based CRM, Zoho CRM in 2002. Moreover, entrepreneurship became a rage resulting in the founding of innovative startups such as PubMatic, SlideShare, SVG Media, InMobi, Druva, Vizury, Capillary and GirnarSoft. 12