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BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA AUGUST - 2010 SILICONINDIA.COM

Bobby Srinivasan, President & CEO

 COVER STORY
ROAMWARE
R the
Quick Facts
Founded: 2000
President & CEO: Bobby Srinivasan
Headquarters: San Jose, CA
Other Offices: Amman, Brussels,
Bangalore, Dublin, Hong Kong,
uling
Johannesburg, Mumbai, New Delhi and
Singapore
Headcount: 374
Global Customer Base: 464 Mobile
Operator Networks, Banks and
Financial Institutions
Customer Footprint: 154 Countries
Investors: Shelter Capital, Primera
Capital, Doll Capital and Accretive
Vertical: Mobile
Website: www.roamware.com
siliconindia
|10| August 2010
Roaming Space
‘A
By Christo Jacob
ction is eloquence’ and Bobby Srinivasan, President and
CEO, Roamware is proving it just right by showcasing
India not only capable of body shop business but also can
be armed to build smart global product company. Srini-
vasan, who left India in 1985 to pursue higher studies,
had always dreamt of building a world class product completely out of
India that could transform lives of billions globally. It was this passion
and sheer belief that helped him align his thoughts during the initial
years of founding Roamware. The mantra worked well, with Roamware
entrenched as the global leader in voice and data roaming solutions and
a leading provider of mobile financial services. The company’s compre-
hensive suite of technologies and services helps operators globally to
make mobile roaming better and easier.
Now Srinivasan has a reason to be pleased with roaming revenues
forecasted to grow to $146 billion by 2011 . Founded in 2001, currently
Roamware’s products are deployed in over 464 mobile operator networks
across 154 countries and its services available to over three billion mobile
users globally. Additionally, Roamware’s mobile finance solutions have
been successfully deployed by major banks and operators around the
world, and serves a wide range of needs across the domains of mobile
commerce, banking, remittances and payments. “For nearly a decade, we
have successfully nurtured and grown this business —- despite the chal-
Bobby Srinivasan
lenges of global sales, delivery and support across diverse markets, e global
events including wars, global pandemics like SARS and the financial
meltdown in 2008-2009,” says Srinivasan.

“Roamware’s strategy from the in-
ception has been to play the role of
the preferred strategic partner on
the roaming business front for mo-
bile operators globally and this phi-
losophy is the fundamental
reason for our
success and
widespread
adoption of our
solutions in the
world
market.”
Abraham Punnoose, VP – Global
Marketing & Business Development
He could achieve this only because
he envisioned the business to be global
in nature at its inception. Srinivasan en-
sured that the senior management al-
ways had the appropriate DNA required
to challenge the Roamware team in
building world class products. This phi-
losophy of the company has cracked the
so called misconception of building your
initial business within 10 miles from
where one lives. With his chin up, Srini-
vasan proudly says “Today we are oper-
ating across 154 countries, serving over
460 mobile operator networks around
the world.”
Bee in the Bonnet
No matter where the customers are lo-
cated, mobile operators need to drive
down the costs associated with their
businesses. Current roaming trends have
resulted in decreasing revenues, declin-
ing margins and fierce operator compe-
tition. Moreover today telecom
operators could lose up to 10 percent of
roaming revenues because of quality is-
sues. According to a recent industry re-
port, an average of 39 percent of all
mobile calls falls below the industry
minimum standard for voice quality.
Given that roamers represent a profitable
customer segment, the implications of
poor quality of service include lost
roaming revenues and potential churn.
New regulations, roaming price reduc-
tions, stiff competition and a sharp rise in
siliconindia
|12| August 2010
data roaming traffic are some of the key
drivers forcing operators to search for
innovative business solutions to in-
crease traffic, drive usage, optimize
costs, and meet their goals.
“Roamware’s strategy from the incep-
tion has been to play the role of the pre-
ferred strategic partner on the roaming
business front for mobile operators glob-
ally and this philosophy has been the
fundamental reason for the success and
widespread adoption of our solutions in
the world market,” says Abraham Pun-
noose, VP – Global Marketing and
Business Development ,Roamware .
Old-fashioned, bilateral relation-
ships among Mobile Network Operators
(MNOs) are no longer sustainable as
they require massive manpower, signif-
icant costs and an inordinate amount of
time. Established MNOs have spent 10-
15 years setting up 400 to 500 roaming
agreements in place with contract / rela-
tionship management departments in
charge of bilateral roaming relationships.
It’s a timescale and a workforce alloca-
tion that definitely does not fit at all in
new entrants’ requirements in terms of
time to market and operational effec-
tiveness. If MNOs continue to follow the
traditional model, it would be a tremen-
dous waste of energy in negotiating hun-
dreds of bilateral agreements, energy
that instead might be better utilized o
promoting their own core business.
Once the roaming relationships are set
up, the daunting task for operators is to
leverage these agreements and garner in-
cremental market share and consequent
revenues and profit.
To address these challenges, one of
the earliest solutions from, Roamware
was the innovative Roaming Replicator
solution that would reduce go to market
timelines for a full fledged roaming of-
fering in under 12 weeks. Built in a
modular way, the suite of roaming solu-
tions reduce the overall complexity, pro-
vide operators with powerful technology
solutions to address business challenges
and enable them to focus on the end-cus-
tomer instead of inter-operator relation-
ships. Today, Roamware is the pre-
ferred and primary solution provider of
roaming solutions for the majority of tier
1 mobile operator’s inlcuding AT&T, T
Mobile, Orange, Airtel, Maxis, Etisalat
and Vodafone globally and this trust is
further reflected in joint hubbing initia-
tives with some of the major mobile op-
erator companies across regions.
“Our business model is a blend of
software license, transactional revenue,
revenue share and managed services re-
sulting in a robust and predictable rev-
enue model with recurring revenue
constituting 30 percent of company’s
revenues. By 2012, recurring revenue is
expected to touch 50 percent of overall
revenue. The global footprint and market
penetration ensures that there is no rev-
enue concentration in any region or se-
lect customers, effectively eliminating
risks arising from regional downturn or
loss of key customers,” says Richard
Grohol, EVP World-wide Field Opera-
tions, Roamware. Today the company
enjoys a leadership position with its
comprehensive bouquet of roaming so-
lutions and other line of key business
like carrier service, social network com-
merce and mobile financial services.
Roamware’s group relationships in mo-
bile operator world include Orange,
Vodafone, Telefonica, Airtel, Claro,
Orascom, Telia Sonera, Telenor, MTS,
Vimplecom, STC, T Mobile and Eti-
salat among several others.
“Our business model is a blend of
software license, transactional rev-
enue, revenue share and managed
services resulting in a
robust and predictab
le revenue model and
recurring revenue
constituting 30
percent of company’s
revenues.”
Richard Grohol
EVP World-wide Field Operations
“ Within the roaming segment,
Roamware’s product innovation has
been instrumental in driving quiet a
few industry standards. Key indus-
try standards including Open Con-
nectivity, Steering of roaming and
global roaming
quality are
standards that
were introduced
as a result of
industry adoption
of innovative
Roamware
products.”
Dr. John Jiang
CTO and EVP Product Management
Comprehensive Suite of Roaming So-
lutions
It’s been nearly decade since Roamware
was set up, and the company developed
its solutions completely out of India
using local talents. Srinivasan’s vision
was to create a world class product suite
that could meet global standards. The
company had the good fortune to work
in a market where they were surrounded
by the Indian GSM operators who were
very focused on value added solutions
and services. “The company always
wanted to build products in sync with
customer’s business requirements and
we had the privilege of engaging most
of the operators in India and Asia Pacific
at that time, clearly a market where the
adoption of value added services and
new services was far more advanced
and aggressive than the U.S Market at
that point in time. Within the roaming
segment, Roamware’s product innova-
tion has been instrumental in driving
quiet a few industry standards. Key in-
dustry standards including Open Con-
nectivity, Steering of roaming and global
roaming quality are standards that were
introduced as a result of industry adop-
tion of innovative Roamware products,”
says Dr. John Jiang CTO & EVP Prod-
uct Management, Roamware
Dr Jiang, further adds the invention
of a “Method and System for Cellular
Network Traffic Redirection” was
widely embraced by the GSM Associa-
tion’s mobile industry standards known
as “Steering of Roaming”, empowering
a mobile roamer’s home network oper-
ator’s system to direct any of its sub-
scribers to roam on its preferred roaming
partner’s network when using their mo-
bile phones abroad. The network-based
approach that Roamware first created in
its Roamware Traffic Redirection sys-
tems permits the mobile network opera-
tors to apportion outbound roaming
traffic to its roaming partners in line
with their business commitments, cus-
tomer’s service requirements and global
alliance and is agnostic to locations,
time zones and mobile handset make.
Today, Roamware’s voice and data
roaming solutions are installed in over
464 mobile operators’ networks across
154 countries and generate incremental
revenues for mobile operators, whilst in-
creasing their operational efficiencies
and reduce subscriber churn. The solu-
tions are built on the Roamware Service
Delivery System (SDS), a carrier-grade
platform based on open standards that
enable seamless integration of multiple
applications which can be seamlessly
added as blades to the core platform,
each blade representing a product. “The
robust carrier grade Roamware SDS (
Service Delivery System ) is the under-
lying platform and bedrock of all
Roamware products and solutions and
enables for our customers a range of ca-
“The platform is designed for ease
of integration into existing infra-
structures. Because of the use of
open standards such as
SOAP, XML, J2EE
and its pluggable
component design,
it can easily integrate
with existing legacy
systems and
third party
software.”
Avnish Chauhan
EVP Engineering
pabilities that reduces time to market for
new services, and constitutes a signifi-
cant barrier to entry for competition.
Roamware’s thought leadership coupled
with our global execution capabilities
have been the keys to our success This
outstanding effort has resulted in over
196 patent submissions , introduction of
several ground breaking products in the
past few years and 28 patents awarded
till date,” says Avnish Chauhan, Execu-
tive Vice President Engineering
Product Suite
Roamware’s product portfolio consists
of over 40 solutions across the GSM and
CDMA domains that are built on the
Roamware Service Delivery System
(SDS). The Roamware SDS facilitates
seamless deployment and integration of
network applications and services with
a mobile operator’s core network l and
IT infrastructure. The Roamware SDS is
the backbone of Roamware’s solutions
and supports the smooth deployment of
value-added applications and services. It
embodies a modular, component-based
layered platform architecture that en-
ables applications to achieve optimum
performance, while supporting seamless
integration with an operator’s network
management and operation support sys-
tems, through open and standards-based
protocols and interfaces. It allows the
operator to unify critical subscriber and
network information for the design and
deployment of intelligent personalized
services on 2G, 2.5G and 3G networks,
on an easy-to-use application deploy-
ment framework. The platform enables
applications to deliver high availability
through redundant deployment of soft-
ware and hardware elements.
Applications are equipped with in-
tuitive web-based interfaces for ad-
ministrative operations, application
information provisioning and genera-
tion of business and technical reports.
The Roamware SDS includes active
network interface support over proto-
cols such as ISUP, CAMEL and IN
variants, as well as passive monitoring
siliconindia
|13|
August 2010
capabilities for sniffing relevant infor-
mation exchanged over the signalling
network. These interfaces are avail-
able for SS7 and SIGTRAN and facil-
itate seamless compatibility of
Roamware’s applications with evolu-
tions in network technologies.
Roamware’s suite of services, built
on the SDS, addresses a range of busi-
ness challenges including the quick roll
out of roaming infrastructure, traffic
management acquisition and retention of
roamers, driving roaming usage , accel-
eration of prepaid roaming, seamless
service experience, quality of service,
market intelligence, cost optimization
among several others. In addition, the
global availability of converged voice,
messaging and data services fosters sub-
scriber loyalty and increases competitive
differentiation. Roamware’s suite of
roaming services are Traffic manage-
ment, communication and service expe-
rience, virtual home environment,
roaming and local multi-number, roam-
ing and network infrastructure and busi-
ness intelligence and quality assurance.
In line with the strategic role that its
sees for itself for is mobile operator cus-
tomers, the company has now rolled out
a range of carrier solutions to enable a
number of roaming carrier services in
partnership with global voice and data
carrier partners. This would enable
Roamware to optimize roaming calls
cost and would carry the roaming and
interconnect voice traffic for its cus-
tomers. Dr Jiang says, “We are com-
mitted to the success of our customers
and operator’s readiness to allow us to
carry voice traffic is a reflection of the
confidence in our technology, strategic
thought leadership and overall business
value we bring to the table.”
Leveraging global footprint for Mo-
bile Financial Services
The company after building out a global
footprint in roaming space with an esti-
mated 65 percent market share has cata-
pulted itself to the next level with
Mobile Financial Services. The move
siliconindia
|14| August 2010
into mobile banking and m-commerce
was a logical extension for Roamware
as it leverages its existing global cus-
tomer relationships, business partner-
ships and technology platform.
According to Juniper Research, the
Service Provider market revenues will
exceed $5 billion globally by 2013.
These revenues are based on the com-
missions and charges acquired from the
gross value of money transactions de-
rived from mobile money transfer serv-
ices and remittances. Juniper Research
highlights a significant opportunity for
the providers and vendors of mobile
money transfer (MMT) services as the
market takes off, beginning as early as
2010. Moreover 3–15 percent of inter-
national money transfers currently han-
dled by formal or informal agent
networks will be carried out using a mo-
bile handset by 2015; generating $1.2–
6.2 billion in service revenue.
Roamware is eyeing to grab this market
through strategic partnerships and ac-
quisitions.
In line with their plans for the Mo-
bile Financial Services business,
Roamware acquired Macalla, a leading
developer of mobile financial services
(MFS) solutions and strive to become a
market leader in MFS, specifically ad-
dressing the needs of low income, un-
banked communities across the world.
“Macalla’s m-commerce and mobile
banking solutions are successfully de-
ployed by banks and operators around
the world; these solutions include
credit transfer, international remit-
tance, person to person transactions,
top-up and bill payment. With
Macalla’s acquisition, Roamware aims
to build upon its roaming expertise and
its global operator relationships,” says
Richard Grohol EVP, Worldwide Field
Operations, Roamware.
Roamware’s Macalla Platform en-
ables a wide range of innovative mobile
financial services including direct top-
up, agent top-up, bill payment, person-
to-person payments, mobile banking,
cross border VAS and both national and
international remittances. “The platform
is designed for ease of integration into
existing infrastructures. Because of the
use of open standards such as SOAP,
XML, J2EE and its pluggable compo-
nent design, it can easily integrate with
existing legacy systems and third party
software,” says Avnish Chauhan, EVP
Engineering, Roamware. Adaptors and
plug-ins are used for major transport
mechanisms such as JMS, IIOP, MQ
Series, Tibco, EJB and standard support
for CM, CRM, billing and location
based services.
For instance, Bank of Ireland iden-
tified the need to deploy a prepaid mo-
bile top-up service which takes
advantage of the increased consumer
use of SMS as well as using its existing
ATM channel. Using Roamware’s tech-
nology which enables mobile transac-
tions, Bank of Ireland launched a
prepaid mobile phone top up service.
The service, called Text Top Up, went
live in 2005 and is available to all Bank
of Ireland customers in Ireland on Voda-
fone and O2 networks.
The Roamware Macalla Platform
enables Bank of Ireland customers to
top-up their own prepaid accounts and
others, including friends and family,
directly from their mobile phones. To
do this, customers simply send a free
text message. The transaction is auto-
matically paid for via their Bank of
Ireland account.
Registration is extremely easy and
instantaneous via any Bank of Ireland
ATM. Once registered, a customer can
top-up from his mobile phone anytime
and anywhere in Ireland or overseas.
The top-up call credit is applied auto-
matically within a matter of seconds.
The Roamware Macalla Platform
enables top-ups and associated
processes in a fully secure and reliable
manner. It also provides connectivity
with the mobile operators’ SMS de-
livery and prepaid billing systems as
well as the bank’s payments systems.
The platform includes a suite of web-
based applications for call centre and
rectly with Bank of Ireland to deliver permanent tsb, O2, Bank of Ireland,
the application together with a complete MoneyText, Illuminat and Vodafone.
range of consultancy, technical integra-
“The core leadership team has
tion and on-going support services. Aiming high
worked together for over nine
From launch the system proved to “In a market that is largely known for
years with several
be a very popular service with Bank of its IT services capability “I am proud
decades of
Ireland customers and exhibited an in- to be on deck of on organization that
cumulative
crease in frequency of top-up as well as has built a world class product suite
experience in
a higher transaction value. The service completely out of India and has been
telecom, banking
has also proven popular with bank cus- instrumental in shaping the global
and enterprise
tomers who travel abroad as they can roaming business in over 150 coun-
software.”
Bishal Bisht now top-up their phones as easily as at tries,” says Srinivasan.Soon Srini-
home. Today the platform is used by vasan will be comparing the
SVP Finance and HR
supervisor staff to ensure the smooth mobile operators, banks and independ- performance of Roamware with the 11
and efficient ongoing operation of the ent service providers internationally in- great companies that Jim Collins talks
service. Roamware Macalla worked di- cluding VIVA (STC), mPay, Jawwal, about in Good to Great. si
The Man Behind the Scene
As a co-founder Bobby Srinivasan’s leadership, passion gether for over nine years with several decades of cu-
and keen insight has been crucial to Roamware’s suc- mulative experience in telecom, banking and enterprise
cess. Due to his extraordinary vision and deep market software,” says Bishal Bisht, SVP Finance and HR,
acumen, the company grew by over 25 percent in 2009 Roamware. The leadership team has been recognized
despite the worst economic downturn in recent history. for professional excellence in several industry forums in-
Srinivasan’s career has included senior level service with cluding Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year, Ste-
SoftPlus (acquired by US Interactive in February vie Business Awards and World Brand Congress.
2000), Objectivity, Hewlett Packard, Apollo Comput- Today the company is riding high receiving several
ers, the World Bank and Shearson Lehman Brothers industry recognitions including the Frost & Sulli-
and this helped him to play the right card for van Technology Innovation Award, Deloitte Tech-
Roamware. Over the last nine years he has been in- nology Fast 50 and Deloitte Technology Fast 500
strumental in transforming the company from a start in 2006. In 2007, Roamware won the Red Her-
up into a global leader in roaming and value added so- ring 100 Most Promising Private North Ameri-
lutions. In fact this earned him lot of applauds in the in- can Technology Companies in 2007 and Deloitte’s
dustry including Distinguished Honoree medal in 2007 Wireless Fast 50.
Executive of the Year in North America in the 2010 In- There is no looking back for Srinivasan, but
ternational Business Awards and the Ernst & Young he believes that there are billions of people who
Entrepreneur of the Year, 2010 Award Finalist for own mobile phone and he aims to transform
Northern California The International Business Awards each mobile phone a bank account for them,
are the only global, all-encompassing business awards where they get paid their daily wages and other
program honouring great performances in business things. He says, “How do we make that mobile
For him the early days of aligning Roamware were phone, more than just a mobile phone and that is
focused around instilling values and cultural elements what we strive to do.” Roamware is building mi-
within the enterprise. He credits the success of crofinance applications and believes that it can
Roamware to his leadership team, and the smart move change the world of the unbanked and underbanked
of building products in India. His continued focus on and make them economic citizens of the world. “I
achieving the vision has helped Roamware to achieve a am aiming at not just make money for the stake
leadership team comprises of a multicultural, experi- holders but also want tos transform the lives of bil-
enced and professional team with global experience and lions of poor people. That is what success means to
an optimum mix of mobile operator and technology me and I think that is what we are going to do in
background. “The core leadership team has worked to- the next five years,” says Srinivasan.
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August 2010