'We are the only company with the technology to scan Internet traffic.'

After acquiring a BTech from Mumbai's VJTI and a computer sciences diploma

from VESIT, Govind Rammurthy began his career in 1991 at Telco as systems

analyst. He started Microworld Software in 1995 with Red Armour as his first

product. MailScan, eScan and other products followed suit. Even today, this

unassuming man spends most of his time with the technical staff developing new

products and enhancing the existing ones, while leaving the day-to-day running

of the company in the hands of his capable subordinates. Excerpts from an

interview with DQCI.

What are the business activities that MicroWorld is involved in?

MicroWorld is currently a global provider of content security products for

some applications like POP3 servers, where it enjoys a complete monopoly. Our

marketing tie-up with Deerfield.com Inc, which accounts for over 60 percent of

the market for POP servers, provides enhanced credibility.

We also have a similar tie-up with other companies like Paul Smith Computer

Services for VPOP3. Negotiations are underway to have another tie-up with

Pegasus for NTMail.

How will these tie-ups help MicroWorld?

These tie-ups not only enhance the visibility and credibility of MicroWorld,

but also provide access to the distribution networks of all these companies. In

short, it creates worldwide reach for all the products of MicroWorld.

What are the various products that Microworld has?

Our

flagship products are eScan and MailScan. The latter is also an enterprise

product. eScan is basically our umbrella brand and within this brand we have

virus control edition for the home segment, eScan Pro for the SOHO and the eScan

corporate and enterprise products.

What was MicroWorld’s revenue for the fiscal 2000-01? What percentage of

it comes from your overseas market?

Last year Microworld touched a turnover of Rs 15 crore. Of this, over 90

percent of our business came from overseas markets.

What is the pricing strategy for your products? Is it standard worldwide?

No, we devise a pricing keeping in mind the economic conditions of a

particular geographical region. So prices of our product differ from country to

country. But prices of all our products are fixed in US dollars.

Do you have a direct presence in all the overseas countries you sell in or

do you sell through a channel network?

In South-East Asia, we have distributors in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore,

Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines. In Europe, we have distributors in Germany,

France, Italy, Holland, Ireland, Switzerland and Austria. In Middle East, we

have two channel partners in Dubai.

Recently we also tied up with Servex to distribute our boxed products, like

eScan in Malaysia. Thiscom, our other distributor in Malaysia, will handle the

sales of our enterprise products. This com has exclusive distribution rights in

Malayasia, and non-exclusive rights in other parts of South East Asia.

So you can see that we have our entire operations in place for overseas

business. And also we have used a channel network to cater to these markets.

What are your plans for the Indian market?

This financial year, we started channelizing our sales in India. Once our

dealer network is in place, we will increase our focus on the country. However,

this does not mean that we are ignoring the Indian market, which has a size of

roughly 25 crore.

Though we have offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, most of the sales will

be through the channel. We want to appoint 155 channel partners in India by the

end of fiscal 2001-02, of which we have already signed on 25.

We are also concentrating on B and C class cities of the country, where we

can provide on-site support to the customers through our channel network.

Do you have content protection software for mobile access devices like

cellphones and PDAs?

We are not concentrating on PDAs. At the moment, our aim is to consolidate

our international operations. Once the sales and brand consolidation takes

place, we will start working on products for such devices.

When do you plan to launch your firewall, eConceal?

We should launch eConceal by the end of March 2002. The product has been in

beta-testing stage for over six months now. It got delayed because we were

concentrating on the consolidation of eScan and MailScan. We did not want to

launch another product till the other two were well entrenched in the market.

What is your USP vis-a-vis those of other content security providers like

Trend Micro and Network Associates?

Our USP is Microworld WinSock Layer (MSL). Over 60 percent of the market

content security products are from the big companies. Despite that, in the past

10 months or so, there has been at least one security breach where corporate

customers have lost millions of dollars.

The basic question customers are asking is why this is happening. And the

primary reason to this is that most companies work on the file system layer.

This means that these products can effectively scan files which are stored on

your hard disk drives, floppy drives, and CD-ROM.

But if intrusions happen over the Internet, then they are rendered

ineffective. This is because the products do not scan the WinSock layer. Our

products do this. We are the only company with the technology available to scan

your Internet traffic and this is our USP.

How do you plan to build your brand share?

MailScan is primarily a gateway protection product. So our target customer is

very clear, which is the corporate community. If they buy MailScan then they

also buy eScan. So MailScan is the sales route for eScan. Also we tie-up with

software development companies who devise software for mail servers, to co-brand

MailScan with their products.

We are also exploring giving MSL technology to other companies to integrate

it with their products and pay us royalty in return. However no concrete action

has been taken on this front.

What happened to your plans to patent MSL?

We have already put in our applications. Hopefully it should be patented by

next year.

Which new products are you working on currently?

MicroWorld is working on eScan, MailScan and eMailGate so that they can carry

a tiny information robot (Inforob) that would collect information from

predefined locations on our web-server and deliver it to the desktop. This will

be integrated with the site by the name direct2pc.com.

We are also in the process of developing a vertical security portal to

comprehensively disseminate information related to the security industry. Apart

from these, we are working on WAP gateway products, both on the operating

systems and applications layer.

VINITA SUVARNA-BHATIA in Mumbai