Vishwanath
Mr Vishwanath, or Vish as he is known, set up IMISoft in 1988 and is the Chairman and CEO. Vish founded IMI Software with a vision of developing an IPR centric technology company based out of India. He had earlier been involved in setting up an all India hi-tech consumer services in the Healthcare field and has operated at Board level in several companies over the last twenty years.
Originally the company developed an engineering software division providing software products for engineering and management applications, before establishing a mobile division in 1999. The mobile division, "IMImobile’, is a global end to end enabler of mobile Value Added Services to exploit the huge business potential created by the fast emerging mobile data services market.
IMImobile has established itself as one of the leading players in the mobile VAS space in India with clients such as Airtel, India's leading mobile operator and Star TV, India's leading broadcaster. Internationally it has recently started marketing its services and has had success in the Far East, Middle East and the Caribbean. The company is profitable and growing rapidly, employing 150 people in offices in India, UK and USA. Spark became the sole investor in IMISoftware in 2000.
On the relationship.......
“Our relationship with SPARK began seven years ago when they first invested in the company. As investors they were a great match for us, it was clear that the team had good understanding of the sector and their management experience provided an excellent source of reference, particularly as at the start we were very much an early stage business.”
On the investment.......
“Spark knew when the right time was to invest to grow the company, firstly when IMiSoftware diversified into the mobile application sector to form IMimobile and secondly in 2005 when capital was raised to aid global expansion into the Far East, Middle East and Caribbean markets.”
On adding value.....
“It is difficult to expand a company particularly on the operations and strategy side. SPARK was very proactive in helping us with this and understood what should be done. The SPARK team helped IMISoftware meet the right customers and we could make use of their global network in this area. This was invaluable in the internationalisation of the business, particularly our expansion in the Caribbean.”
On the challenges.....
“Starting up your own company and conceptualising a new idea is a journey of a lifetime. However, there are also many challenges. In India, small company’s find it difficult to recruit good people due to all the large players in the market. Similarly it is difficult sometimes to know how to target the right customers and partners for growth. SPARK was very proactive in this area and helped us to understand our market.”