Tech Story

Zensar Technologies started as a manufacturing unit of a British original equipment firm in 1922.

IT industry is the leading one among all, and we need to admit that it has become quite impossible to work without using computer software, independent of the nature of the work. The raised demand for software and other IT services has also increased the number of companies that are available 24*7 for providing those software development services to those companies. Zensar Technologies is one of the leading IT service providers of India, which is not only offering various software products and digital engineering to Indian companies but also different enterprises across the globe. In the past thirty years, the company has expanded to over twenty countries on all the continents.
The software services from Zensar Technologies include experience design and engineering, digital engineering, application transformation, data engineering, Oracle services, SalesForce services, digital infrastructure, digital security, etc. The major service areas for the company are Hi-tech and manufacturing, Banking and financial services, Insurance Retail, and consumer services.

About the Company

Zensar Technologies is a 30 years old Indian software company. It is a publically held company and trades on the Bombay Stock Exchange as well as the National Stock Exchange of India. The company headquarters is based in Pune, India, and it is a subsidiary company of the RPG Group. It handles the software development wing for the latter. The company services include digital supply chain, artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, data management, enterprise applications, etc. Before becoming Zensar Technologies, it was known as International Computers Limited India, with a history as old as 1922. Today, over 10,000 people are working for Zensar, and as per 2021 records, the company made annual revenues worth US$494.0 million.

Founding Zensar Technologies

Zensar Technologies started its software development journey in 1991, as International Computers Limited (ICIL). The company history dates back to 1922 when it was just a manufacturing unit of a British original equipment manufacturing firm. In later years, the unit became ICIM (International Computers Indian Manufacture), and in 1963, it went public on the Bombay Stock Exchange. ICIM started to focus more on software starting from 1991 and closed its hardware manufacturing unit by 1999.
In 2001, ICIM received its new name, Zensar Technologies, with most of its shares being held by the RPG Group. As Zensar, the company began to provide application management services to its clients. In the following years, the company started its growth through multiple acquisitions. It acquired companies including OBT global (2005), ThoughtDigital (2007), Akibia Inc (2010), EZA (2013), Professional Access Inc (2014), Foolproof, Inc. (2016), Keystone Logic (2017), Indigo Slate(2018), Cynosure INC (2018), M3bi (2021), etc.
In 2012, about 11000 people were working for Zensar, and it started to serve globally. In fact, by 2018, Zensar had opened offices in 20 different countries in North America, the UK, various parts of Europe and South Africa. The innovative work of Zensar Technologies has won many recognitions for it, including Niche Player 2019 for managed mobility services by Gartner Magic Quadrant and BIG Innovation Award for Technology in 2021.

The CEO/Founder at Zensar Technologies

Ajay S. Bhutoria is the current CEO and the Managing Director at Zensar Technologies. Bhutoria has more than 30 years of work experience and has worked at various well-established companies on all the continents.
Bhutoria happens to be a Charted Accountant by qualification but started his career as a Solution Architect at Software Research Centre Ltd., ICAI. Later he joined TCS (Netherlands) and worked for ten years in various positions at the company. In 2002, Bhutoria switched to Cognizant and became the Global Head of Retail, Consumer Goods, Travel & Hospitality at the company. He also became the Chief Executive at L&T in 2019 and remained so for ten months. In January 2021, Bhutoria became the CEO and MD of Zensar Technologies and held the Princeton, New Jersey, United States office of the company.

Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

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Kaltura, One of the leading tech innovators famous for its video platform.

Kaltura is a global publicly-traded company established in the internet video industry. The founders of the company are Ron Yekutiel, Shay David, Michal Tsur, and Eran Etam. Kaltura was founded in 2006 and it is currently based in New York City, US. It is mainly a software company that offers products in four major markets. They are Cloud TV (over-the-top media service), online video platform (OVP), Education Video Platform, and Enterprise Video Platform. When Kaltura was founded, it was established with an idea that video content is a way to revolutionize communication and collaboration in our lives.

About Kaltura

Kaltura works as a team of approximately 750 members. The company has offices in foreign countries like Brazil, Singapore, Israel, the UK, and the US. From all the co-founders of the company, Eran Etam is not holding any current position at Kaltura. In 2018, Kaltura was on the list of “20 Tech Innovators to Watch” and two years later it became one of the companies to exceed $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

The company offers video product solutions across every enterprise in various industries. For educational purposes, it has three products, Virtual Classroom, LMS Video, and Lecture Capture. Recently, Malaysia’s leading entertainment company, Astro has chosen Kaltura for its new streaming service. In December 2021, the company has also collaborated with Vodafone Germany.

Early Days of the Company

Founded in 2006, Company was officially launched in the market in 2007 at the TechCrunch40 industry event. Thus the launch of the company took place in San Francisco and those who were attending the conference voted Kaltura for the People’s Choice award. When the company was launched, Kaltura operated with only twenty members and received funding of $2.1 million from Avalon Ventures and other investors. In 2007, the company became a hit as it became the winner of the Mashable Open Web Awards. It was a People’s Choice Award where more than 250,000 people voted in the Video Sharing category. In the same year, Company also established a partnership with New York Public Library.

Kaltura became one of the companies in 2008 that received “Global 250 Winners” by AlwaysOn. The company established a partnership with Wikimedia Foundation in the same year with a common goal to bring quality media content to Wikipedia and other similar websites. The main idea behind this project was to develop software (a video-wiki type software) and that it would be integrated into the MediaWiki platform. This software would be an extension allowing users to add video players that would enable adding and editing any kind of media (pictures, audio, video, etc). This was a very progressive idea as media content like images and videos always tend to have a more impactful impression on our minds.

To bring more advancement into the process of making this software, Michael Dale, an open-source video developer to develop this video editing solution for the Wikipedia pages. This was announced in the Wikimania 2008 event which was also sponsored by Kaltura. The company has also established Open Video Alliance, a community where people work towards improving the video standards for the websites.

Recent Events

To develop an integrated media solution for Blackboard Learn (™), Kaltura and Kaltura Blackboard Inc collaborated in 2011. In 2014, Kaltura acquired a company called Tvinci for its OTT TV service, In the following years it partnered with several companies and also raised $50 million from Goldman Sachs in 2016. For showcasing the new OTT experience, Kaltura partnered with companies like 24i Media, Encompass, Harmonic, and Inception. The company was planning to file an IPO since 2015 and it has also turned down an offer of a $500 million acquisition to do so. But, one of the founders of the company, Shay David mentioned in 2017 that the company will go public only when the valuation of Kaltura comes close to $1 billion.

Ron Yekutiel – Co-Founder and CEO of Kaltura

Ron Yekutiel, one of the founders of Kaltura is in the position of CEO from the very beginning. In 2003, he also co-founded another company called VisualGate Systems Inc (a video surveillance company). Ron Yekutiel went to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has also co-founded and lead GPSoft Ltd before Kaltura happened.

Annasha

Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

Zeta Global – A Marketing Tech Startup That Has Received Unicorn Status.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Zeta Global is a US-based company specializing in data-driven marketing technology. It is a new company that was founded fourteen years ago in 2007. The headquarters of the company is based in New York City and it focuses on offering multichannel marketing tools to its customers. David A. Steinberg and John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple co-founded Zeta Global. Back in 2007, it was established under the name of “XL Marketing” and its name became Zeta Global in October 2016.

About Zeta Global

Zeta’s marketing platform is used by some of the largest companies in the world to grow and retain customers at an affordable rate. When Zeta was founded, it was established with the idea that it should be able to offer solutions to a complexity arising from managing multiple vendors across various channels. All these vendors provide different points of solution like automation, customer data management (CDM), omnichannel engagement, etc. So, Zeta was founded to bring all these solutions under one roof by developing very intelligent software.

The platform of Zeta is not only about growth and bringing in more audience, but also strengthening the relationship between existing customers. Today, after Google and Facebook, Zeta Global has the third-largest dataset in the entire world that is powered by various demographics, behavioral, locational, etc factors. Zeta Global started trading publicly in 2021 at a $1.7 billion valuation. The company has a presence in 11 countries including India.

History of the Company

XL Marketing was established in 2007 and its name was changed to Zeta Interactive in 2014 followed by the current brand, Zeta Global in 2016. Within the first ten years of the company, Zeta acquired nine other companies. In 2013, it acquired the Adchemy Actions division of a parent ad tech firm, Adchemy. This acquisition helped Zeta have access to Adchemy’s machine learning-based advertising platform. Next year Zeta acquired a Boston-based company called Clicksquared that offered a SaaS-based campaign management platform.

To grow the company through more acquisitions, Zeta raised $125 million from Blackstone’s GSO Capital Partners. With this funding, Zeta mainly focused on acquiring data startup companies. Later in that year, Zeta acquired eBay’s customer relationship management division and this deal was worth $80-$90 million. Steinberg, after the acquisition, made a statement that this deal would help them become the largest customer lifecycle management platform. In August 2016, Zeta bought “Acxiom Impact”, a market automation tool for $50 million from the parent company, Acxiom. Later in that year, the company also hired a new CFO, Jarrod Yahes who was a former executive at EXL Service Holdings.

Recent Events

In 2017, Zeta hired Donald Steele as the company’s CRO. This was the first time in ten years that the company hired for this position. In a debt funding round in April 2017, Zeta raised $140 million from GPI Capital and Franklin Square Capital Partners. After this funding round, the company’s total valuation became $1.3 billion. In the same year, Zeta acquired two new companies, Boomtrain, an ML platform, and Disqus. In the past three years also Zeta acquired several ad tech companies including Temnos, Sizmek, etc. In March 2021, the company raised $222.5 million after which it announced that it will file its first IPO. Currently, it is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Awards & Accolades

It has been featured in many top-rated magazines and websites. Zeta was featured in the Forbes Most Promising Company in 2014 followed by in the list of Forbes “Top 100 Analytics Startups of 2015.” In 2017, Zeta was ranked as “Visionary” in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Hubs.

David A. Steinberg – CEO of Zeta Global

David Steinberg is famous as a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple companies including Zeta Global. David’s net worth is approximately around $750 million. In 1993, he founded his first company, Sterling Cellular from the basement of his house. And, before co-founding Zeta, there were other two companies, namely, Inphonic and CAIVIS Acquisition Corp. David went to Washington & Jefferson College.

Annasha

Sapiens International Corporation, the company making software for the insurance industry since 1982.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Yashica Vashishtha

The rising popularity of the internet and the emergence of the cloud has made it necessary for every sort of industry to have dedicated software that would ease out the daily work for them. Industries from healthcare, aviation to hospitality to education, etc., each are using information technology in one or the other way. Some are merging AI to their daily operations, whereas, others are paying for special software products for performing special tasks in the company. This is the same case with the insurance industry too. The industry is also is operating through some major software and online platforms made by some leading software companies like Sapiens International Corporation.

About the Company

Sapiens International Corporation is a forty years old company. It is a computer software company, with its headquarters based in Holon, Israel. Insurers and brokers are the company’s major clients, who cover insurance on property, Casualty, pension as well as worker compensation.
Tsvi Misinai, Tuvi Orbach, and Shai Sole founded Sapiens in 1982, and since then, the company has gone through a lot of positive changes adding to its growth. With over 4000 people working for the company, it has operating income worth US$ 45.03 million (as per 2020 records) and had generated revenues worth US$ 382 million in FY20. Sapiens International Corporation has its clients based in all corners of the world, and it operates through its subsidiaries, i.e., Sapiens America, Sapiens North America, Sapiens Technologies, Sapiens (UK) Limited, Sapiens Japan Co, and Sapiens Israel Software, etc. The company trades as a public company on Nasdaq as SPNS and on Tel Aviv Stock Exchange as SPNS.

The Founding of Sapiens International

Sapiens International Corporation was founded by three members of a team working on a project to build a novel object-oriented application generator in partnership with Advanced Automated Applications (AAA). These founders included Tsvi Misinai, Tuvi Orbach, and Shai Sole, Tuvi Orbach being the founder of AAA. AAA also got merged into the newly built company during its founding. Though the company was founded in 1982, the founders adopted the name Sapiens in 1984.
In the next ten years, Sapiens had grown to 900 workers and 33 different branches established all over the globe. The company also started to trade publically on NASDAQ in 1992. With the rising popularity of the internet, Sapiens also started to merge technology with its services. It developed the business rules technology (eMerge) in the late 90s. By this time, Sapiens’ revenues had reached $91 million.
The year 2001 was the year of new beginnings for Sapiens, as it started to develop new software products for the insurance industry. The company also made some major acquisitions to have speedy growth. These acquisitions included Harcase (2010), IBEXI Solutions (2015), Insseco (2015), Maximum Processing (2016), StoneRiver, Inc. (2017), Calculo (2019), sum.cumo GmbH (2019), Tia Technologies (2020), etc.
Life Insurance, P&C, Decision Management, Workers’ Compensation, Financial & Compliance, Reinsurance, Medical Professional Liability, Digital Insurance Modules, etc., are the major software products from Sapiens.

The Founders

Tsvi Misinai is one of the three founders and the main brains behind Sapiens International Corporation. He is a well-known Israeli computer scientist and entrepreneur. Misinai was born on 15 April 1946 in Jerusalem, the British Mandate of Palestine. He is a Physics graduate and the first Israeli Rothschild Award for industrial development in the field of software recipient (1992).
During the 70s, he was working for Weizmann Institute of Science, a public research university in Rehovot. Misinai was the project head for the novel object-oriented application generator development program at the institution. He left the institute in the late 80s to founding Sapiens in 1982. The founders included one of the team members at the institute, Shai Sole, and the AAA owner, Tuvi Orbach. With the founding of Sapiens, he became the President of the newly founded company and remained so till 1994.

Yashica Vashishtha

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Cyient – An Indian Technology Company Dominating In Diverse Engineering Fields.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Cyient, previously known as Infotech Enterprises Limited, is a publicly-traded company based in Hyderabad, India. It is a global provider of engineering and technology solutions and in 2018 was one of the top 30 outsourcing companies globally. The company was founded in 1991 by B. V. R. Mohan Reddy, an engineer, and a business executive. The company currently has more than 300 customers across the world and it includes 29 among the Fortune 500 companies. The name of the company was changed to Cyient in 2014 after getting approval from the shareholders.

About Cyient

Cyient, through the journey of the last three decades, has successfully marked its presence in 14 countries across Asia, Europe, and North America. It has 12,000 associates that help in strengthening the local relationships leading to more empowering global deliveries. The company serves a lot of industries including aerospace, automotive, geospatial, healthcare, energy, heavy instruments, communications, rail transportation, etc. Cyient applies its FIRST principle values across all stakeholder relationships and it stands for Fairness, Integrity, Respect, Sincerity, and Transparency.

Cyient also has several group companies. They include Cyient Europe Ltd, Cyient Singapore Pte Ltd, Cyient Ltd (Japan), Cyient Design Led Manufacturing, etc. The company is traded in both the National and Bombay Stock Exchange since 1997. Recently, the company has expanded its digital solution for the aerospace industry and also launched global management consulting practice.

Early Days

Cyient was established in Hyderabad as Infotech Enterprises back in 1991. After four years, the company received its first certification (ISO 9002) for its conversion services. When the company was founded, it was initially a private organization that focused on offering engineering services on a global scale but faced strong resistance in the area of engineering outsourcing. It found many opportunities in the geographic information system (GIS) sector and eventually started growing. In 1997, the company decided to go public and sold its shares for Rs 20/- per share during the IPO. In the same year, Company also acquired SRG Infotech, a software company that was known for offering services to Oracle.

In 1999 Cyient entered the US market as it signed a deal to offer GIS conversion and consultation mapping services to the US-based Analytics Survey Inc. Company also opened a subsidiary of the company in the US and the same year signed another deal with Navionics Italy for the same services. It also acquired a series of companies including Cartographic Sciences from Analytical Surveys Inc and Dataview Solutions Limited (a UK-based software company). In April 2000, Cartographic Sciences merged with Cyient. Cyient also made a breakthrough in 2000 as it landed a huge deal with an aircraft engine manufacturer.

Growth and Success

Cyient started acquiring more and more companies across the globe and also expanded to various fields to offer its solutions. In 2000, it acquired a German company called Advanced Graphics Software GmbH, a software company that specialized in 3D CAD/CAM. In April 2001, Company acquired an independent European GIS distributor, Map Centric. It also established a strategic business relationship with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies Corporation that is a Fortune 100 company. This was a long-term agreement where Pratt & Whitney was offered approximately an 18 percent equity stake of the company.

By this time, Cyient became one of the top 100 global outsourcing companies and was also featured in Forbes Asia in the list of “200 Best under a Bullion.” In 2005, Company acquired Tele Atlas India Pvt Ltd where the parent company, Tele Atlas joined in as a strategic partner. In 2017, the company acquired Certon Software Inc.

B. V. R. Mohan Reddy – Founder of Cyient

B. V. R. Mohan Reddy is the founder of Cyient. He went to IIT Kanpur followed by the University of Michigan, USA, and has received honorary doctorates from several universities. Apart from founding Cyient, he has also served as the Chairman of NASSCOM in 2015-16 and continued to be a member of its Executive Council since 2003. He is also the founding director of T-Hub, India’s largest startup incubation center.

Annasha

Lectra, a leading fashion technology provider in both CAD and CAM.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Lectra is a French technology company founded in 1973 by two engineers Jean and Bernard Etcheparre. The company’s headquarters is based in Paris, France and it is a publicly-traded company. Lectra is known for bringing digitalized transformation into the world of fashion and apparel and more than that. And, what place could have been better than starting the business in Paris and entering the fashion market. Lectra mainly specializes in CAD software and CAM cutting-room systems. It offers software, hardware, as well as consulting services.

About Lectra

Lectra, with its technology, empowers the companies in the fashion and apparel industry, companies that design car interiors, furniture, etc. The products and services of the company assist in a digital transformation of multiple steps from designing to production. Recently, Company has acquired USA-based Gerber Technology, a competitor in the market.

Currently, Company has 34 subsidiaries and operates across 34 countries with 1,650 employees. It also has three international advanced technology and conference centers. Initially, Lectra used the CAD software to assist the fashion manufacturing industry because their technology was compatible with those using soft materials like leather but it has evolved in the last three decades.

History of Lectra

The history of Lectra started in 1973 when the two engineers founded the company. Their initial target was to enter the fashion and apparel industry and boost their designing process with the help of technology. In 1976, the company was successfully able to develop the first CAD software for apparel making. Soon the two founders met the venture capitalist, André Harari, and he helped in raising the capital Lectra needed to implement a proper business development plan.

In the next decade, i.e., the 1980s, Company expanded to international markets. Lectra’s first foreign subsidiary was established in Germany followed by the UK, Italy, Spain, and finally in the US. Till now the company only used CAD for its software products but in 1985 it expanded into computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) in the fashion industry. In the same year, Company was recognized as the topmost company across the globe in fashion CAD.

After becoming a leading fashion technology provider in both CAD and CAM, the company decided to go public and filed its first IPO in 1987. Unfortunately, the company faced some financial troubles during the early 1990s, and it was recapitalized by Daniel and André Harari. After its recapitalization, Lectra extensively invested in R&D for its every product range and in 1995 rolled out its first product data management (PDM). Between 1996-1998, Lectra made a breakthrough in pattern making and grading, and also pattern fabric matching cut management (Mosaic).

Lectra in 21st century

Lectra entered into the 21st century as the famous global leader in fashion CAD and CAM. It launched many new products and services in the next ten years like Lectra Fashion PLM, 3D prototyping, and IoT-based preventive maintenance services. Eventually, Company entered the automotive industry and topped the list in automotive CAM. It also made several changes in its core software and 2012 added predictive maintenance in its software.

In 2014, Lectra established a partnership with ESCP Europe to establish a chair in Fashion and Technology for its luxury innovation research. And, after a few years, Lectra joined hands with a few other companies to launch the Biarritz Active Lifestyle Integral (BALI) Chair. With Lectra being a company with a unique perspective in the 1970s, it is still a global provider in its sector. The company has been the recipient of several awards and recognitions that include winning the Showcase for the Industry of Future Alliance from the Industry of Future Alliance. The company has recently acquired Kubix Lab, an Italian company in 2018, and Gerber Technology, an American company in 2021.

Daniel Harari – CEO of Lectra

Daniel Harari became the CEO and Chairman of Lectra in 1991. Before that, he has served in various companies in executive positions and also as the CEO. He started his career by joining an asset management company as its Vice President. Daniel also served as the CEO of Compagnie Financière du Scribe, a venture capital firm based in Paris.

Annasha

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