Outsourcing: Arijit Bhattacharyya, CEO of VirtualInfoCom.com (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How many people are you training in this mode per year?

Arijit Bhattacharyya: Per year, per institute, it depends. But in Kolkata, we have 160 people; in Jodhpur, we have nearly 210. Pune is a new institute, so it has no more than five people.

SM: You don’t have that many people in your company, do you?

AB: No, we don’t recruit all of them. Nowadays, we have a tie-up with about 89 [companies] in the industry. We provide these companies candidates.

We started an online portal for games. Now, any person who can develop a game or company that can develop a game can upload the game into our portal, and we’ll sell it. This portal has an option for musicians to submit their music or vocals. Then game development companies, animation companies, and movie-making companies can hire these musicians and vocal artists. It also has a small plug-in segment along with a small object segment. People in the gaming sector are actually looking for small plug-ins. They’re not easy to find over the Internet, and the cost is high. So, we put up small plug-ins, created by us, as well as a few 3-D objects created by others. These are sold through the portal in a B2B mode.

For the training aspect, we started another portal that is directly connected to the companies and has free training materials on smart phone apps, games, animation, and so on. We give online examinations to people who are applying for jobs. If they pass the exam, we send their CVs, along with the results, to the hiring teams. In the training segment, we have a pool of people who are looking for jobs, and we have a pool of companies that are looking for people. We’re trying to match these two segments by using this portal.

In terms of gaming, we are matching the industry with freelancers and creative people so we can have a virtuous circle. It was not so easy for me to get to this level that I’ve gotten to. I don’t want people to have to go through the same process that I did. So, if I can make a circle of creative people who can help each other … the pie is very big. There is no shortage of jobs in the market. They can easily get good projects, do some good work. That’s what I’m trying to do in the gaming segment.

SM: So, you’ve got a training business, and the people you train are getting hired into your company as well as into other companies. There are about 89 companies that are hiring out of your training institute. That’s one part of your business.

AB: Right.

SM: The second part of your business is outsourced development work, and you have a variety of resellers in different parts of the world who sell your services and get you projects. You’re also doing online marketing and getting game development and animation projects. That’s a third part of your business.

AB: Right.

SM: And you’re developing games of your own that you sell through carriers or value-added service providers, and that’s a fourth part.

AB: Nowadays, we don’t sell directly through the carriers. We sell through the app stores. We have a deal with Intel India. So, through the Intel app store, we sell things. We have a deal with Android and Apple. We sell things through them now.

SM: What is your most successful app in the Apple iPhone store?

AB: Well, I could give you the name, but those are outsourcing projects. They’re not our own projects.

SM: OK. What is the most successful app that you’ve developed, even if it’s outsourced?

AB: There is a game called Tanquiro that was an outsourced project. There are a couple of games, actually.

SM: So, you’re getting a fair amount of outsourcing projects that are app store projects.

AB: Right.

SM: What is your revenue at this point?

AB: We are close to 24 crores (~$4.8 million).

This segment is part 5 in the series : Outsourcing: Arijit Bhattacharyya, CEO of VirtualInfoCom.com
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