Outsourcing: Arijit Bhattacharyya, CEO of VirtualInfoCom.com (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of where you want to go from here, what are your thoughts?

Arijit Bhattacharyya: I want to grow. I want to go into tier-three [cities] and to other countries that have talent and build institutes there, open offices there and recruit people. I don’t have a set goal.

SM: Why not grow your presence just in Bengal to 500 or 1,000 people instead of trying to open offices all over the country and in other countries? You can grow much faster if you just scale your basic model. >>>

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? >>>

Outsourcing: Arijit Bhattacharyya, CEO of VirtualInfoCom.com (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: This was a game that you designed?

Arijit Bhattacharyya: Right.

SM: And you sold it in the Kolkata market?

AB: Kolkata and outside Kolkata. >>>

Outsourcing: Arijit Bhattacharyya, CEO of VirtualInfoCom.com (Part 3)

SM: Got it. What software were you using, and how were you able to afford it?

AB: We didn’t use any kind of software. I had to write software to create animation. We didn’t have any kind of software for that.

SM: Interesting. You’re quite savvy technically. >>>

Outsourcing: Arijit Bhattacharyya, CEO of VirtualInfoCom.com (Part 2)

SM: They were farm workers?

AB: Yes. But that boy has talent. He is an extremely good painter. I found him while roaming near the river bank and saw him trying to draw a picture of a couple of fishes near the river. I asked him if he would like to learn drawing and animation. First, he asked what was animation. The second thing he asked was what is the benefit of it. I told him that I was not a big business person, but I had a dream that one day I would be and if he came with me, I could teach him and guide him and possibly improve his living conditions. >>>

Outsourcing: Arijit Bhattacharyya, CEO of VirtualInfoCom.com (Part 1)

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Virtual Information and Communications (VirtualInfoCom), based in Kolkata, India, provides its customers with services like game development, simulation, Windows Phone applications, mobile applications, iPhone applications, Android games, mobile gaming and ad promotion, ad commercials and short films, corporate films, animated movies, music videos, visual and special effects, software development, Web page designing, and management solution tools. In short, everything around its core competency of animation and graphics.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Arijit. Let’s start with your background. >>>

Outsourcing: Josh Lieberman, Co-Founder of KMS Technology, Atlanta and Ho Chi Minh City (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is the entrepreneurial landscape in Vietnam like?

Josh Lieberman: It’s pretty interesting. For example, there’s a company by the name of VinaGame. I think the market cap is extraordinarily large, hundreds of billions of dollars. And there are other companies. From an entrepreneurial standpoint, a lot of the entrepreneurial energy is focused back into the country. It’s not focused outward, outside of the country, if you know what I mean. >>>

Outsourcing: Josh Lieberman, Co-Founder of KMS Technology, Atlanta and Ho Chi Minh City (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How easy or difficult is it to find that kind of client relationship talent in Vietnam?

Josh Liberman: It is obviously, more difficult to find that than it is a Java developer or a quality assurance (QA) engineer. We’ve been working in Vietnam for 12 years, so we’ve built up a vast network of people who have worked with us and for us. Our goal is to be a thousand-person company. In order to get there, we have to build those skills internally. The market will not develop them quickly enough for us in Vietnam. It is a bit of a challenge, but because we’re privately held, we don’t have a board breathing down our necks telling us how fast we have to grow. We manage our growth through how quickly we can bring people on board. >>>