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| − | == History ==
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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
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| − | 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
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| − | are poised to go from strength to strength and discover what lies ahead. <br><br>
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| − | '''EVOLUTION OF ZINNOV'''<br>
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| − | 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
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| − | 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,
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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.<br><br>
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| − | '''BUSINESS MODEL - INNOVATION'''<br>
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| − | 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,
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| − | a practice other consulting firms rarely followed due to a fear of losing the client in the future.
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| − | 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.<br><br>
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| − | '''RESOURCE MOBILIZATION AND TEAM BUILDING'''<br>
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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
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| − | 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.<br><br>
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| − | '''BUILDING LONG LASTING CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS AND PARTNERSHIPS'''<br>
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| − | 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.<br>
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| − | 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
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| − | 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.<br><br>
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| − | '''NURTURING A STRONG VALUE SYSTEM'''<br>
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| − | 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
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| − | 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.
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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>
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| | ==Services== | | ==Services== |
