As technology evolves, the need for efficient tech support will also increase. Having tasted market success for its niche services in the West, iYogi co-founder & CEO Uday Challu feels that his firm is now well poised to tap the consumer and SMB markets in India. He talks to Sudhir Chowdhary about the general trend in this space and further growth plans. Excerpts:

How has the journey been so far, from setting up the venture to current status?

Our journey so far has been an enriching experience overall. I had set up a tech support business as one of my early entrepreneurial ventures. At that time, achieving scale in such a business was a tough proposition— delivering a consistent customer experience was hard since we were dependent on an individual’s capability, training and experience. But things changed when computers and devices became IP enabled and tech problems could now be resolved remotely. With the proliferation of technology products and technological advancements, the need of support for support services has also increased.

We’ve been in operation for over six years, and the landscape has also evolved. The technology ecosystem that we

operate in these days is very different from the time we set up our business. Workplaces are now becoming mobile with BYOD becoming a big transformational step. There is also

growing complexity in a heterogeneous work environment, where you don’t always get support for everything. At home, with changed demographics, you have an additional pool of older and younger people who are gadget and technology friendly but might not always have the knowledge base to use and run tech products efficiently.

Our endeavour has been to address this gap by creating technological competence and standardisation and that’s where our journey is at this point. The remote tech services that we provide seek to address the changes in our environment through our robust proprietary cloud platform—the Digital Services Cloud (DSC). Our scope of support has also expanded from simple break fix support to usability assistance and more recently assisted buying.

What are the unique characteristics of your business model that led to the success of your venture?

What is really unique about our services is that they are powered through our proprietary platform, Digital Service Cloud (DSC).

The DSC seeks to enhance the customer experience by replacing the traditional delivery model for tech support which relied too much on an individual’s capability, training and experience to deliver solutions— with a standardised process driven delivery model. With each consumer interaction, this platform gets smarter documenting every problem and solution. The DSC thus, facilitates automation and collaboration across multiple skills, competencies and delivery models including remote and onsite, and also allows the company to capture and replicate learnings from every request that is serviced, leading to continuous innovation and improvements in the quality of service delivery. The platform helps us evolve our services as the customer needs evolve.

How do you differentiate and market your product/service from your competitors?

The tech support market in India is highly underserved with multiple providers delivering a limited scope of service and no one addresses SMB’s needs in a holistic manner. With regards to SMBs in particular, there is a conspicuous gap in the market beyond the traditional annual maintenance contracts. Our services provide a flexible solution for a business of any size that is enabled by a solid technology platform that provides on-demand support and preempt any problem. iYogi’s

annual unlimited subscription plan is a single point solution to support and provides usability assistance for any technology. The support dock application for desktops and mobile devices provides an advanced user interface to access self-help videos and solutions, as well as a single click access to tech experts anytime and from anywhere.

What will be your strategy going forward for the India market?

With our tech support services across the world, we are well poised to tap the consumer and SMB markets in India now. As technology evolves, the need for efficient tech support will also increase. Therefore, we also plan to launch a cloud-based security and tech support application that will ease the lives of consumers even further.

The DSC platform has a proven capability to increase customer lifetime and value, and can generate operating income between $15 and $20 for every customer interaction. By using DSC, telcos, technology retailers, OEMs and global service providers or BPO companies can not only use support as a channel for new revenues, but also expand their business by adding tech support services, the market for which is estimated at $100 billion globally and at least R20,000 crore in India.

Via Financial Express
Sudhir Chowdhary