Directory:Zinnov

Zinnov
Type	Private Company
Founded	2002
Founder	Pari Natarajan
Headquarters	Template:Country data US The Woodlands, Texas, USA
Key people	Pari Natarajan, Vijay Swaminathan Vamsee Tirukkala,
Industry	Management Consulting
Employees	80 (2010)
Contact	575 N. Pastoria Avenue Sunnyvale, CA 94085-0000 +1-408-716-8432 Web: [1]
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History

In the year 2002 three childhood friends, Pari Natarajan, Vijay Swaminathan and Vamsee Tirukkala, came together to set up an entrepreneurial venture and to realize a childhood dream they saw together during school days. Zinnov, derived from ‘Zeal in Innovation’, is today a leading management consulting firm in the offshoring advisory, HR Consulting and market expansion consulting services space, serving multiple Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 and NASDAQ listed companies, besides many medium sized enterprises.

Zinnov started with a very niche focus on offshoring advisory for technology firms in 2002-03, but today has diversified into many service lines and industry sectors. From almost negligible revenue in 2002, it has now reached revenue of more than USD 2 million (Exhibit 3) and boasts of a very strong portfolio of clients comprising of some of the most reputed Indian and international firms.

The founders were quick to identify the value proposition that outsourcing brought to various firms worldwide and how India featured prominently on the outsourcing map going forward. A parallel realization was the scarce availability of offshore advisory services that would help firms worldwide to choose outsourcing frameworks and partners. This realization gave way to an attractive opportunity in a market where they saw a great future potential for consulting services. They persisted beyond their humble beginnings to build a successful firm with an innovative business model. The passion of the co-founders and their networking capability helped them mobilize resources and build a strong team that fostered the evolution of Zinnov’s capabilities as a leading consulting firm that soon outpaced it competition. Zinnov attributes a lot of its success to its ability to build long lasting client relationships and partnerships and ability to inculcate a strong value system in the organization. They have successfully overcome many challenges and are poised to go from strength to strength and discover what lies ahead.

OPPORTUNITY ATTRACTIVENESS

Coming from technology background and armed with over 24 years of man-years experience, the founders thought of starting with consulting services around offshoring and outsourcing to technology companies. The key domains of opportunity attractiveness that gave birth to Zinnov are the following:

Industry Domains - The management consulting industry in India in 2002 was still in a nascent phase with few large and some niche players. Zinnov perceived a sustainable advantage by focusing on a niche domain and by adapting a strategy of lower cost and accelerated differentiation.

Market Domains – The founders saw a clear market need in the growing IT R&D offshoring space. Their idea of opportunity was farsighted. They knew that since the offshoring space was evolving fast, there was be inevitable challenges with respect to strategy, execution and management. There were not many companies who had realized this need at that time. Hence, by starting ahead of time, they wanted to create a niche for themselves.

Team Domains - The co-founders left high paying and successful careers to materialize their aspiration. With respect to resources, they exhibited a high risk taking ability in terms of giving high level of ownership to employees early in their career and the opportunity to interact with clients directly. The co-founders however did not have complementary skills. A key skill set they lacked was business development experience. The co-founders, specifically Pari and Vijay, did have considerable experience with offshoring strategy and operations.

HUMBLE BEGINNING AND EVOLUTION OF ZINNOV’S CAPABILITIES

It was the aspiration to create a distinct management consulting firm and to leave a legacy behind, that inspired the three childhood friends to start a venture in 2002. Prior to co-founding Zinnov, Pari Natarajan, CEO held various leadership positions such as India country manager for Praja, Inc. (a C.K. Prahald company) and India country manager for Centric Software, Inc. He had enviable experience in operations, product development, managing global teams, managing vendors, and project management Vijay Swaminathan, President had worked with KPMG, Sabre, QuestOne and Hewitt Associates and had wide experience in the areas of the statistical modeling, business analytics, operations research, CRM, enterprise resource planning and strategic management. Vamsee Tirukkala Executive Vice President (EVP) had held various technical and managerial positions with Centric Software, Inc. and had hands on experience in remote vendor management, product management, remote process design and new technology & tool evaluation. All of them, especially Vamsee also had great networking capabilities and people skills, which the company planned to exploit in business development.

The three friends started off with an informal understanding of an equal partnership in 2002. Pari left a successful career to start his venture out if his room. The other two partners, Vamsee and Vijay however, continued with their jobs in the US, in order to sustain the working capital requirements. Pari deployed his savings into the venture and Vamsee and Vijay contributed an equal amount every month, to cover both living expenses for Pari, and to cover operating expenses. These were difficult times and looking back they still admire the sacrifices made by their families in dealing with their strenuous work schedules and cash crunches.

Since Pari was the first one to be fulltime, he became the CEO. Vijay and Pari were equals in terms of role in the company (ownership was split equally between the 3) and they decided on president title for him. EVP was the next large title and so it made sense for Vamsee to have that title.

Since none of the co-founders had consulting experience or an MBA, the immediate challenge was to build credibility. They thought a good way to start would be start doing research on the offshoring industry and write whitepapers and publish them on the web. Vijay’s wife, created a website for Zinnov and they published many white papers, which helped to get attention from potential clients and build credibility. However, they did not make any money in the first year. What held them in good stead through the initial Challenging times was the trust based, close relationships the co-founders had. Despite their handicaps in terms of lack of consulting and business development/ sales experience, and despite the fact that they virtually did not make any money in the first year, they stood by each other in good faith. Their shared vision and commitment to making the venture work and a strong bond between them helped sail through adverse times and deal with setbacks and failures and consistently strive for success.

Year 2003-04 brought the first few business opportunities for Zinnov. One of Pari’s mentors, Mr. M.R.Rangaswamy, helped Zinnov to get a speaker slot in the Outsourcing Conference 2003 (held in the US), which landed Zinnov its first client three clients. Effectively, they did the first few projects for free or almost free. The objective was to gain hands on consulting experience, build a very strong credibility and get great references, from a long-run perspective However, more than a foot in the door strategy, under-pricing became an issue for a long time.

One reason that co-founders cite is that they lacked confidence in asking for high price, as they were themselves learning how to do consulting. Hence, due to lack of prior experience in management consulting, they ended up hugely under-pricing their services and did projects for 1/40th of the price charged by other consulting firms. For one client, they did a business case analysis (ROI on offshoring initiative) and they hugely undercharged (USD 2,500 only against an industry average of USD 100,000). However the efforts did pay off through repeat engagements and great references. One success example is wherein they did two pieces of studies for a client for USD 1,000 each and thereafter they got a project for USD 30,000 in year 2003 from the same client.

In order to expand its professional network, besides whitepapers, Zinnov also introduced a monthly newsletter, targeted at small to medium sized technology companies and venture capitalists. They created a robust database for the newsletter mailing list and distributed it free over email.

Zinnov also started building some indigenous decision making tools such as Offshoring Location Analyzer and ROI (Return on Investment for offshoring) Analyzer. Both Vamsee and Vijay joined Zinnov fulltime during 2004 -05. Zinnov evolved by leaps and bounds in terms of its capabilities around the entire lifecycle of offshoring advisory services - offshore strategy, offshore setup and assessment of existing setups. Its services were structured around both captive and vendor models (also hybrid models). It acquired marquee clients in its portfolio, including two Fortune 1000 and four NASDAQ listed companies and executed 12 client engagements; with 10 employees. Zinnov continued to add more proprietary decision making tools such as Portfolio Analyzer and RFP Toolkit.

During 2005-06, Zinnov started its HR Consulting and Market Expansion Consulting practice, based on a lot of interest from existing and potential clients. It added five “Fortune 1000” customers and did 25 client engagements with 20 employees. Zinnov hired some of its key employees during this phase, at an attractive compensation.

During 2006-07, Zinnov further expanded its services to include organization design and effective client positioning engagements. It grew substantially through partnerships (being India partner for ). It grew to 40 employees and executed 40+ client engagements. From writing white papers on the offshoring space in 2002 to helping Fortune 500 companies across a number of areas, Zinnov has successfully evolved and now has a mature offshoring advisory practice which offers services around the life-cycle of offshoring services and has fast growing HR Consulting and Market Expansion Consulting practices.

BUSINESS MODEL - INNOVATION

Zinnov adapted a business model that became a source of innovation for it to succeed in the consulting industry. While most other consulting firms were costly and hence not affordable for many small to medium sized enterprises, Zinnov started off with a low cost, yet high quality business model. In addition to consulting services it also provided decision making tools to customers from day one, a practice other consulting firms rarely followed due to a fear of losing the client in the future.

Zinnov had a different philosophy that sharing the tool not only builds greater trust and transparency, but also adds a lot of value to the customer which can result in long term benefits such as repeat business and great customer references. Back in 2003, very few management consulting firms really focused on implementation of the recommendations to the clients. Zinnov adopted the concept of a combination of ‘doing’ and ‘enabling’ to help clients with strategy implementation. Zinnov also had a high degree of flexibility with respect to its customer requirements, which gave a greater deal of comfort to the clients and eventually helped in building long-term relationships.Zinnov developed many indigenous tools to help clients with offshoring strategy, set-up and management such as Portfolio Analyzer, ROI analyzer and Location Analyzer.

RESOURCE MOBILIZATION AND TEAM BUILDING

The founders not only mobilized their network for clients, but also for hiring quality talent. Due to lack of qualified resources, initially the founders hired a few college graduates in year 2003, through reference. They did many successful client engagements during 2003-2005 and thereafter the passion, commitment and vision of the founders helped Zinnov to attract top talent from top universities and companies. The founders offered various incentives for candidates to join the organization such as greater opportunities for career growth, opportunity to shape an organization, strong value system and culture and attractive compensation. The co-founders exhibited a high risk taking ability by hiring seemingly high potential people at very attractive compensation packages and experimenting with people from diverse backgrounds. They gave employees high degree of discretion, responsibility and opportunity to interact directly with clients and take decisions, very early in their career. They believed in grooming people with no relevant experience, for the job, by putting them into client situations from the very start, along with a mentor. Knowledge was shared on a personalized basis across the organization and a learning environment was fostered.

Zinnov also offered a profit-sharing based compensation structure based on company performance, individual performance and team performance. They take pride in the fact that they have had a no glass ceiling culture and employees can take their ideas directly to the top management. The founders showed a great ability to identify the good ideas and acted upon them without any delay. From no employees in 2002 to more than 40 employees from some of the best institutions (such as IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Chennai and London School of Economics), and companies in India (McKinsey & Co., Ernst & Young, Triology, Daimler Chrysler, Hewlett Packard, Bearing Point and Infosys). Today 80% of their employees are lateral hires with an MBA (Finance, HR, Marketing and International Business), Engineering (BE and MS) and Commerce backgrounds, most of them with diverse research and/or consulting experience. Zinnov has built strong credibility in the market and maintains a very low attrition rate of 5% since inception.

BUILDING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Zinnov coupled innovation with exploitation of existing knowledge base and best practices. From a low cost leadership strategy during the inception phase, Zinnov is fast moving toward a differentiation strategy. As the co-founders have gained more confidence in their consulting and execution abilities, they have clearly identified areas in which they could differentiate themselves and hence changed their positioning to a high value firm. In the productivity frontier, we assess that it is now very close to its immediate Competition (TPI and NeoIT) and also to leading consulting firms such as McKinsey & Co. and BCG. Big players in India are still to feel the heat, as many of them have not paid heed to the growing success of Zinnov which has already made a dent into the existing client base of the top 3 consulting firms. It has also formed a strategic partnership with and has been able to grow the partnership in a short span of one and a half years. The following 2 sections talk more about how Zinnov build its competitive advantage.

BUILDING LONG LASTING CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS AND PARTNERSHIPS

It was not just the high quality of work that attracted repeat business and helped in getting very good references for Zinnov, but also the ability of the co-founders to build very strong relationships with the clients. In the words of Pari Natarajan, the CEO, “Many a time’s customers had an option to go to other consulting firms, but they still came to us not just because of our expertise, but also because they really liked working with us”. Zinnov gave a very high mind-share to each of its clients, which really helped them build trust, confidence and long-term relationships. Until 2006, 90% of the business came from references and repeat business, which goes to substantiate the relationships that co-founders had built with clients. Zinnov also had a high degree of flexibility w.r.t. its customer requirements, which gave a greater deal of comfort to the clients and eventually helped in long-term relationship building.

They adapted a combination of ‘Pull’ and ‘Push’ Strategy for getting the initial lead. However, once a company becomes a client, after the first project, they themselves kept coming back to Zinnov (Pull strategy). There were some companies that were attracted to Zinnov due to the indigenous tools built by them or the research reports it had published on its website. These companies contacted Zinnov directly. Eg. One of the top five management consulting firms in the world downloaded Zinnov’s RFP toolkit ($1000) and impressed with the quality, they wanted to buy some additional papers. Pari negotiated with them and said that if they introduce Zinnov to the firm’s partners, Zinnov will give the paper for free. They setup a meeting with the partners and rest of the outsourcing team. Vamsee and Pari pitched Zinnov’s services to them and got a key project with them. There has been no stopping since then. Many companies required a substantial selling effort but Zinnov was able to build very high credibility after the first project with them. (Push strategy). Eg. A Fortune 50 American software company didn’t demonstrate great interest in the relationship initially; however, after the huge success of the first project, they gave three projects to Zinnov in a span of three months.

NURTURING A STRONG VALUE SYSTEM
A strong value system was institutionalized throughout the organization, which also helped to keep the employees glued together. The firm is highly customer focused and committed to understand & adjust to the changing needs of customers, delivering measurable results, providing outstanding service with professionalism & humility and maximizing customer satisfaction in a timely manner A lot of emphasis is given to integrity; the firm is dedicated to demonstrating moral principles, ethical standards and honesty at every step. Great emphasis is placed on securing the trust of team members, customers & partners. They also lay a premium on providing high quality of work and strive for excellence by providing consistency, taking responsibility and being accountable for deliverables.

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.”

Services

Globalization Advisory

Benchmarking Services

Human Resource Outsourcing

Zinnov tracks over 100 metrics within HRO function. Zinnov's benchmarking study for globalization of HRO includes a comprehensive taxonomy of processes, locations, and engagement models.

Information Technology outsourcing

Zinnov's benchmarking study for IT globalization includes a comprehensive taxonomy of engagement models, investments, governance models, processes and suitable geographic locations. Zinnov tracks over 80 metrics within IT function.

Finance & Accounting

Zinnov's benchmarking study for F&A globalization includes a comprehensive analysis of process maturity, compliance requirements, engagement models, investments, governance models, processes, global business support requirements and suitable geographic locations. Zinnov tracks over 80 metrics within F&A function.

Research & Development

Zinov's benchmarking studies for R&D delves into the details of Dollar spend, Investment Return Analysis, Globalization, Process and Talent etc. Zinnov tracks over 100 metrics within the R&D function.

Marketing & Sales benchmarking

Zinnov’s benchmarking study for M&S globalization includes a comprehensive analysis of process maturity, compliance requirements, engagement models, investments, governance models, processes, global business support requirements and suitable geographic locations. Zinnov track over 50 metrics within the M&S function.

Operations Optimization

R&D Globalization Council

With Zinnov's profound experience in the industry and several engagements with Global R&D center stalwarts, They realized the need of a service offering that would help these global centers improve productivity, drive innovation and optimize operations. R&D Globalization per se has seen a phenomenal growth in the last 5 years and has played a key part in showcasing its capability in innovation and high quality work.

Knowledge Workshop

Knowledge workshops are designed to educate internal stakeholders on effectively working with their global counterparts. These workshops were designed based on our extensive research on offshoring and globalization and are presented by our consultants with extensive operational experience in offshoring.

Globalization Compliance and Best Practices

Over the last decade financial institutions have increasingly globalized their IT operations driven by cost savings and availability of skilled human capital. However, globalization is also accompanied by risks associated with people, technology, governance and intellectual property etc. at offshore locations. In addition, concerns associated with customer data privacy mandate these financial institutions to develop and implement security processes that are risk focused, establish robust IT controls and ensure timely resolution of audit deficiencies. Thus adhering to compliance has become an imperative for financial institutions globalizing their IT operations. FFIEC and other regulatory standards enforce companies off shoring to demonstrate due diligence with respect to compliance and subject them to periodic regulatory audits.

Governance Framework

Many a times we have noticed that companies who come to India, are unable to run the set-up well enough, due to lack of governance framework. This typically leads to a lot of confusion between the onshore and offshore teams.

Hence, a well-planned governance model can set right expectations among various stakeholders involved and also help establish transparency. For beneficial governance frameworks, Zinnov assist customers with:

• Creating a vision for the offshore strategy
• Defining detailed offshore plan
• Managing the offshore centre

Strategy and Setup

Portfolio Prioritization

Zinnov, analyze our clients’ portfolio of applications, products and processes and help them define an appropriate roadmap for their sourcing initiatives. As part of this service, we help customers define long-term roadmaps for their sourcing initiatives.

Engagement Model Analysis

There are over 800 multinational companies in India with their own R&D, IT and back office centers in India. In addition to that, there are over 1000 companies in India who provide R&D, IT and back office services to multinationals. Besides this, there are a number of companies who use both their own centers and vendor partnerships for their offshoring needs..

In a case like this, choosing the right engagement model is important as it has direct implications on the cost, productivity and the talent available for offshoring initiatives. Choice of the engagement model is also very specific to a particular company. A wrong choice here often increases management overhead and the cost involved in offshoring.

Location Analysis

Offshoring location landscape is undergoing a fast change. Cost of operations in many of the earlier offshoring cities such as Bangalore, Beijing, St.Petersburg has gone up considerably. New locations in Vietnam, Latin America and Eastern Europe have infact built the due competence now. Currently there are more than 50 cities across the world with offshoring capability across R&D, IT and back office operations.

Captive Setup

India as a landscape is diverse in many ways than one, a reflection of which can be witnessed in the way of doing business. Hence, the mantra for any successful business captive here is to “do business the Indian way”. Right from helping our clients choose the best suitable office location, to hiring the right kind of talent, we seek them through all these components.

Zinnov work in tandem with their partners, who in turn help Zinnov's clients’ set-up the required infrastructure, wherein they work seamlessly with the clientele to ensure that their objectives are met.

Vendor Selection

Wrong vendor selection, is a key problem of companies offshoring to India. At Zinnov, since we understand the importance of partnering with the right vendor, the process that we devise to evaluate the same, is extremely stringent with no gap for errors.

Our research and analysis provides detailed evaluation of various outsourcing vendors across the globe and assists customers in selecting vendors who can be ideal partners to their internal engineering team as well as their shared services like Human Resources, Finance and Accounting, in building and maintaining the product or service.

Contract Structuring

A lot of detailing is required during structuring of a contract to avoid any sort of hurdles at a later stage. Any gaps in its formation can cause a lot of hindrances.

We facilitate our clients in structuring robust contracts with outsourcing vendors. Contract terms and conditions are customized and formulated to meet varied objectives of clients. We at Zinnov offer a comprehensive portfolio of services right from the vendor evaluation process to contract detailing and partnership evaluation.

Human Capital Optimization

Our Human Capital Optimization (HCO) service offering allows leaders to understand and solve their critical HR problems. We help companies effectively manage their human capital; strategically develop short- and long-term workforce solutions; and identify and leverage global talent.

HCO Insights

Our global talent pool research and analysis offering includes understanding, analyzing and educating our clients about the talent pool landscapes within specific cities across multiple domains such as BPO, technical support, product development and IT services. Our ability to quantify the existing talent pool for our clients supports their ability to choose the optimal location(s) based on their specific talent needs and financial objectives.

Global Talent Pool Analysis and Research

Developing regions account for 85 percent of the world's population and make up more than 60 percent of the world's business growth. Today, many organizations are looking to access the rich talent available within these "growth markets." In order to do so, companies must align global workforce and business strategy to ensure proper return on investment.

Emerging Countries Compensation Trends

The presence of a large number of multi-national companies (MNC) across emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, India and China has raised compensation levels across multiple positions, creating a highly competitive environment. In addition to salary escalations throughout organizations in these countries, employers are also facing other compensation issues, including the high cost of operations and attrition. Companies are challenged to balance their need to respond to the economic pressures in order to retain key talent, maintain financial stability and position their company for optimal growth.

HR Analytics

Our Modeling and Solutions offering utilizes a deeply consultative approach in working with our clients to understand their critical issues and develop a series of proactive solutions that enhance their ability to meet both their short- and long-term goals. Using a combination of analytical and innovative problem solving techniques, Zinnov has the capability and experience to help companies develop widespread strategic plans and solve very specific human capital problems. We have successfully worked with multiple Fortune-500 companies to design several innovative solutions.

Market Expansion

When the markets start maturing, organizations find it difficult to sustain growth and hence the need to expand sets in. This need of expanding the market can only be addressed with an in-depth understanding of the current market and opportunities available.

At Zinnov, we help companies enter new markets and expand in existing ones thereby assisting customers identify suitable location, scale up people revenue and choose the appropriate product category.

Opportunity Assessment

Before setting foot into new markets, a detailed analysis of the landscape is necessary to make well informed decisions. This service of ours provides a holistic picture to our clients in the form of comprehensive insights that help them gauge specifics like size of the market, positioning, competitor analysis and time frame assessment. Needless to mention but all of these form the basis for informed decisions, hence resulting in effective actions. Feasibility analysis is a framework that can be scaled as per definite client requirements based on growth plans and target area of expansion.

Peer Group Benchmarking

With today’s growing competitive world, it is of utmost importance to be ahead of the pack. At Zinnov, we conduct thorough analysis of the peer group and study the market landscape in detail. This is aimed at highlighting industry best practices thereby providing guidelines on innovative strategies for the way forward.

Customer Insights

Success and failure of any product / service in the market ultimately depends on the end consumer and the manner in which they reciprocate to the same. Hence by virtue of this, it becomes important to keep in mind the end customer while defining the way forward.

As a part of this service, we help clients evaluate key utility levers for gaining maximum traction with their end customers. Our advisory services under this, have helped several clients get a ground view of the market and devise effective strategies that help meet customer expectations.

Distribution Strategy

Reaching the end customer in the right fashion and on time, in today’s growing and competitive environment remains one of the key aspects that worry clients. Ensuring that one’s products are reaching the right consumer through the desired channel, is crucial to any business.

This practice of ours helps clients design, develop, and execute a strong distribution model to reach out to end customers. Our in-depth expertise here supports effective go-to-market strategies for our clients.

Contact Us

USA

Texas Office
21, Waterway Ave
Suite 300
The Woodlands
TX-77380 USA
Phone:+1-281-362-2773
Email: info@zinnov.com

California Office
575 N. Pastoria Avenue
Sunnyvale
CA-94085 USA
Phone: +1-408-716-8432
Email: info@zinnov.com

Consulting (US)
Phone: 408-716-8432
Email: consulting@zinnov.com

India
Bangalore Office:
69 "Prathiba Complex",
4th 'A' Cross Koramangala Ind. Layout,
Koramangala 5th Block,
Bangalore-560 095.
Phone: +91-80-41127925/6
Email: info@zinnov.com

Delhi Office:
Vatika Business Centre,
2nd Floor, Block B,
1st India Place, M.G Road,
Gurgaon-122002.
Phone: +91-124- 4028888
Email: info@zinnov.com

PR and Media (India)
Kinjal Chhetri
Phone: +91-80-41127926/7
Email: media@zinov.com

Events and Conferences
Karthik Ananth
Phone: +91-80-41127926/7
Email: events@zinnov.com

Consulting (India)
Gaurav Malhotra
Phone: +91-80-41127926/7
Email: consulting@zinnov.com

External links

• Zinnov website
• Confluence 2010 - Business Transformation through Globalization