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Indian Software Developer Breaking into Japan

SmartData Enterprises was founded in Silicon Valley, California, USA in 1996 by current president Dr. Sanjai TIWARI. Today, the company has a staff of 300 in offices in the US and India providing offshore software development services that include Internet, database and e-commerce development. So how did Sanjai grow smartData into the success it is today?

“During the early days, our first clients were basically startup CEOs whom I had known personally from consulting,” Sanjai, who was previously a consultant giving his expertise to Fortune 500 companies such as Qualcomm and Bank of America says. “Our mantra has been to be flexible and grow with those clients, and it has worked well for us in the past. Having hailed from Silicon Valley startup culture, we like working with small companies working on exciting ideas with explosive growth potential.”

Despite facing stiff competition from hundreds of small software houses in India, as well as new competition in emerging software countries like Russia and Vietnam, smartData has continued to grow. In the beginning, however, it wasn’t always easy.

“Initially, the biggest hurdle was attracting good employees given that we started small. However, I was able to convince a friend from my Stanford University days to help set up the initial operations,” Sanjai says. “Later, my brother left his job in the Merchant Navy and pitched in his administrative and operations experience. They were mostly responsible for growing the company first from 1 to 50 and later accelerating to a 300-people organization with over 50 clients.”

That growth is all the more impressive considering the company has chosen to rely on personal networking and personal references to attract clients, rather than spending on advertising to market itself. “Given the power of global communications, now we have clients in far away Israel, Greece and the Caribbean, who have visited our offices in India,” Sanjai says. “We would never have dreamt of reaching them through traditional advertising and marketing. Our outreach in the past couple of years has even surprised me.”

To date, smartData’s clients have been mainly small to medium size businesses in real-estate, healthcare, e-commerce and IT services based in the US and Europe, but now the company is expanding into Japan. And smartData’s approach to promotion seems ideally suited to the country. “Our marketing has primarily been through personal networking and client references in the past. We would like to keep it as such for the next couple of years while we try to establish a foothold in the Japanese market,” Sanjai says. “Unlike in the US, I think one needs to have a stronger personal connection and cultural understanding to gain credibility in this market.”
http://www.smartdatainc.net
smartData Enterprises Inc.