“Our key market in India is the government”

What is your product offering for the Indian market?

We offer the solution which is the optimum combination of software and hardware designed for high volume projects like census etc. Whenever an organization intends for digitization of its legacy documents, all it looks for, is an experienced service provider who can get information from the paper junk. Microform equips service providers with the solution that helps them to translate complicated imaging requirements from customer to as easy as putting paper into the scanner.

Are you addressing the enterprise segment only or also considering the SMB as your focus vertical?

Microform scanners are meant for huge imaging jobs where it is required to scan between 2,00,000 sheets per scanner per day. Microform's lower-end products primarily meant for the SMBs.

What are the sectors that Microform is eyeing in India?

The key market for Microform is the government vertical where it has heaps of papers waiting for its services bureaus to digitize. Our association with Netspider Infotech India Ltd (NIIL) as exclusive distributor will instill a greater insight into the Indian market. We, along with NIIL have recently executed two e-governance initiatives, which involved high-volume scanning and ICR of more than three crore forms which was completed within a month.

Would you look at taking the channels route in your go-to-market strategy or would you go direct?

Partners are essential in our go-to-market strategy. We identify reselling and implementation partners in our partner program. Currently, we are looking for resellers and SI partners for project base sales. We have realized that it is not a box sales and it cannot be sold by huge number of resellers. So, we are having the project based approach for scanner sales. Microform partnership is open for any imaging company who trusts in lower cost of scanning per paper. We are inviting major imaging bureaus to be a part of our network. The partner should have at least technical expertise on VB and some hardware knowledge and some investment for demo machine.

With NICSI digitization rate contract coming in, we see that we will be able to increase our partnership base to a larger extent in this country. We organize for training on the hardware and software and support our channel partners with job work offer to put their knowledge in action.

What are your future plans for Indian market in 2011?

Microform does not have any plan to have an office setup in India in near future, as it would operate through NETSPIDER as exclusive distributor only. We are extremely pleased to partner with NETSPIDER for Indian Government projects. We are sure that NETSPIDER will give us a great insight into the Indian market and we hope to make a mark for ourselves in this country in coming years.

Sikta Samantaray

(siktas@cybermedia.co.in)