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| | As Pari Natarajan says, “We are dedicated to creating a learning organization by encouraging creativity & innovation through continuous process of knowledge sharing, valuing each others ideas and accomplishments, helping each other and learning and unlearning from success & mistakes. Our employees are encouraged to embrace actions & behaviors that demonstrate empathy, respect and mutual consideration for each other and it is their endeavor to approach every challenge with maturity and a positive attitude while collectively working towards the organizational goals. Our aim is to build a demanding & caring organization by being transparent in processes, encouraging openness, respecting individual opinions, recognizing and rewarding achievements and providing a joyful environment with opportunity for learning & growth.”<br><br> | | As Pari Natarajan says, “We are dedicated to creating a learning organization by encouraging creativity & innovation through continuous process of knowledge sharing, valuing each others ideas and accomplishments, helping each other and learning and unlearning from success & mistakes. Our employees are encouraged to embrace actions & behaviors that demonstrate empathy, respect and mutual consideration for each other and it is their endeavor to approach every challenge with maturity and a positive attitude while collectively working towards the organizational goals. Our aim is to build a demanding & caring organization by being transparent in processes, encouraging openness, respecting individual opinions, recognizing and rewarding achievements and providing a joyful environment with opportunity for learning & growth.”<br><br> |
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| − | '''CHALLENGES FACED AND ACTION TAKEN TO OVERCOME THEM'''<br>
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| − | Sales and marketing experience None of the co-founders had field sales and marketing experience and hence had difficulty scaling up their client engagement in the initial years. When they started, they did not know how to get their first client and initially did not have a sales team. Comments Pari Natarajan, “On hindsight, we realize that we didn’t understand sales per say. We thought that it had more to do with relationship building and relationship management, and not much to do with the process. We depended heavily on references and other professional network. Now, we realize that effective sales requires a very disciplined and structured approach such as use of metrics, classification of leads into various buckets such as warm, cold, hot, under various functions/ industries and or geographies. It also requires very regular follow-up mechanism to get a high convertibility of the leads into client elationships.”<br>
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| − | Zinnov took a number of steps to counter this problem such as using Salesforce.com in 2005 and very aggressively making sales itches. Today selling has become a very formal part of the entire system wherein all everyone in the organization now contributes Significantly to identifying potential clients and making an informed sales pitch to those clients, after detailed research and analysis. In addition to targets set for managers, employees have bonuses tied to providing leads to potential clients, which serves as a great incentive as well.<br>
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| − | Impact - Due to the above measures, the proportion of business that comes from direct selling has gone up from 10% in FY 2005-06 to 60% in FY 2006-07. Rest of the business comes from references and repeat business. In terms of focus of the top management on various activities, it is very clearly defined now. There are targets to be achieved for each partner.<br>
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| − | Pari Natarajan, CEO, focuses on ‘Offshoring Advisory’ and ‘Market Expansion Consulting’ services in India. His focus includes both MNCs and Indian companies. 38% of Zinnov’s revenue comes from leads generated in India.<br>
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| − | Vijay Swaminathan, Co-founder and Managing Principal focuses on ‘HR Consulting’ and ‘Analytics’ services across sectors and ‘Market Expansion Consulting’ services for all sectors except for the technology sector, in the US.<br>
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| − | Vamsee Tirukkala, Co-founder and Managing Principal focuses on ‘Offshoring Advisory’ services in the US across all domains (such as Technology, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Manufacturing and Insurance). He also focuses on ‘Market Expansion Consulting’ services only
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| − | for the technology sector in the US Services to offer.<br>
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| − | When the co-founders set up Zinnov, they struggled in defining what they should be doing in the consulting domain and what services potential customers would want. There were many potential solutions they could offer, but didn’t know where to start and how to grow the service line(s). Zinnov followed an opportunistic adoption mode. It realized that in a highly dynamic and ever-changing business environment, especially in the offshoring and outsourcing domain, detailed planning was not required. They adopted a flexible model, wherein based on customers’ feedback and based on organization alignment, they started offering different consulting solutions. HR Consulting and Market Expansion Consulting are two great examples of how Zinnov noticed customers requirements, took customer suggestions very seriously and then built two very successful practices.Clients to focus on (Industry and Size of the client)<br>
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| − | Since the co-founders came from technology background, they knew they could start by focusing on offshoring strategy consulting services in the technology domain. But they lacked clarity on other industries to focus on going forward. Also, in terms of client size, they did not target any Fortune 500 company, as they thought that the customer segment was the target for the big league players, likes of McKinsey & Co, One of the top five management consulting firms in the world, Boston Consulting Group and A.T. Kearney. Mr. M.R.Rangaswamy, their mentor played a big part in encouraging the co-founders to ‘Think BIG’ and to start to tapping into those companies as well, besides continuing to serve small to medium sized enterprises. Now, Zinnov has many Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies as its client.<br>
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| − | Zinnov reacted to opportunities and based on the skill-set and experience of employees they hired and based on many internal research studies, they started exploring different verticals. One of the employees did a detailed study on offshoring and outsourcing trends in the pharmaceuticals industry which helped to win credibility from one of the top five Pharmaceutical companies in the world and it is now Zinnov’s client Thereafter they expanded to verticals such as retail, telecom, semiconductor, print and publishing, banking and travel and logistics. Today, Zinnov’s complete client base is 100% referential and a repeat customer. This goes to speak volumes about Zinnov’s capabilities. Building credibility with potential clients Neither the co-founders had prior consulting experience nor did they have an MBA. This made it difficult for them to initially sell their value proposition to potential clients.<br>
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| − | Keeping a long-term perspective in mind, Zinnov adapted a two pronged strategy of doing free projects initially and doing pilot projects later. It also published many whitepapers and monthly newsletter on their website to attract potential clients. The required registration on the website to access free/ paid resources helped Zinnov track interest from potential clients and helped to make
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| − | a robust database. Zinnov did the first few projects for free. After the project delivery, Zinnov not only built very strong credibility with those clients, but also got very good references, which helped in the long-run. Later, Zinnov started doing pilots with many companies to build greater confidence in Zinnov’s ability, at a very low risk and cost. Besides the above strategies, one of the most distinctive initiatives Zinnov took up was that of facilitating discussions between the India executive management teams of IT product companies around challenges and best practices in the operations in India development (R&D) centers. This not only helped Zinnov build a great network, but also helped it get first hand information on best practices and challenges, which they could effectively leverage in client engagements. They currently conduct the IDC Forum in Bangalore and they plan to introduce the same in other cities as well such as Hyderabad and Chennai.<br><br>
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| − | '''ZINNOV’S FUTURE PLANS'''<br>
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| − | The persistence, passion and commitment of the co-founders even today are undiluted and in fact have grown stronger over the years. They want to serve some of the leading organizations of the world solve their business problems across many dimensions. One of the things Zinnov is looking forward to doing is to add more depth and breadth to its service lines, across multiple industries. From serving only technology companies initially, it now has relationships with companies in domains as diverse as Semiconductor, Pharmaceuticals, Manufacturing, Telecommunications, Management Consulting, Financial Services and Travel & Logistics. It plans to enrich this list further and build multi-billion dollar enterprise in the next 10 years. Zinnov also plans on ramp-up in terms of employees and office space, first within Bangalore and then possibly to other prominent cities in India and at the same time expand its presence in the US. Currently it has two offices in the US – Texas and California.<br><br>
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| − | '''COMPARISON OF ZINNOV’S CO-FOUNDERS WITH OTHER ENTREPRENEURS AND KEY LEARNINGS FROM THE CASE'''<br>
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| − | While preparing this case, we came across various interesting similarities and dissimilarities in the approach taken by these three entrepreneurs vis-à-vis the entrepreneurs we studied as part of the curriculum. Here is a summary of the same:<br>
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| − | Friendship in Business – Jay Dehejia stressed in the class that it’s important that when friends come together to work on a venture, its important that they formalize the relationship to ensure that there are no unpleasant surprises going forward. Interestingly
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| − | however in this case, the three entrepreneurs started and still continue with a very informal role definition and job distribution between the three even till this date. While this approach is clearly debatable, one thing is for sure – its absolutely essential that there is great understanding between the initial team members such that the team dynamics don’t get affected<br>
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| − | Leveraging network – As we saw Charles Ferguson used his networks and references very efficiently to realize his dream about Vermeer Technologies. Similarly, in this case, the founders used their networks extensively to get access to clients as well as to recruit
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| − | some key employees<br>
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| − | Relevant work experience or perfectly complementary skills not a necessity – We saw in the Callahan Associate case as well in as some other cases that the founding team had prior experience and complementary skills. However, Zinnov’s case proves that it is not always necessary to have great work experience and perfectly complementary skills within a team to start an entrepreneur venture. All the Zinnov co-founders came from technology background with skills primarily around strategy and operations. They lacked business development/ sales skills, none of them had an MBA and they had no experience with management consulting. Clearly, in this case, it was the ability to build and leverage network, to be persistent and to be able to exploit the opportunity window made the venture successful.<br>
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| − | Employee Value System – A great similarity of this case with Infosys is that there is a rich employee value system within the company that helps to attract, grow and retain employees. Zinnov provides an environment where there is great scope of learning through collaboration across the organization and employees are given more responsibilities and decision making opportunities early on. This clearly speaks for its low attrition rate of 5%. Clearly, firms that have a human resource intensive business model, should always create and maintain a good employee value system<br>
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| − | Persistence and passion pays off – The Zinnov co-founders showed great level of persistence in terms of pursuing their dream and that has put them on a high growth trajectory. Vinod Khosla and the Zinnov co-founders have a lot in common – persistence, conviction and passion. Like Vinod Khosla, the Zinnov co-founders went to the extent of offering free services in the initial stage to get key clients, with a long-term strategic perspective in mind. Their idea of giving decision making tools to the clients also reflected a long-term thought process. They knew that in a dynamic business environment, the data in the tools would soon become outdated and hence the clients would have to inevitably get back to Zinnov. This strategy is very similar to what Vinod Khosla did.<br>
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| − | Relationship is the key in a people driven service business – The Zinnov co-founders exhibited the ability to build lasting relationships with clients and employees alike. It was this strength that kept its clients coming back to Zinnov, even though they had options to go elsewhere<br>
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| − | Opportunity window need to be tapped early – In the year 2002, most companies realized a savings of 30-40% in their IT offshoring/ outsourcing initiatives. Zinnov was farsighted and it realized that e few years down the line, the cost savings would become much smaller and there would be many growth pains. It proactively prepared itself and hence created a success platform for itself. Also, it was the first ever company to focus exclusively on IT product development companies and the very first to start an India Development (R&D) center forum in India.
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| | ==Services== | | ==Services== |
