Sekhar Seshan Pune, May 16: The average iPhone, according to Umeed Kothavala, has 140,000 applications. “It offers solutions to all kinds of problems – even those we probably didn’t know we had!” says Kothavala, founder-CEO, Extentia Information Technology, Pune. And with organisations across the spectrum looking for differentiators to get mind share, this is the ideal medium. “Navigation and entertainment are closely linked, offering possibilities like treasure hunts to promote a mall or multiplex,” he explains. And that’s what Extentia does: it develops applications, many of them related to education and edutainment, and is moving into branded lifestyles and interactive marketing.
Kothavala, a software engineer from Purdue University, US, established Extentia in 1998. Delivering IT solutions to clients across Europe and North America, Extentia boasts strong technical skills in both Microsoft and open source technologies. “We’ve also got into travel over the past 5-6 years,” he says. “It’s a constantly changing market, a fun one to be in!”
In Australia, Mark Luckey, MD, Web-Source Pacific, discovered Exentia in 2005 when he was trying to find “the right sort of business model, which did not involve hiring too many local staff and limiting our focus to specific verticals or skill sets”. Going offshore was a bold step for a small IT company, but he took the plunge – and delivered. “It was not always easy,” he says. “We worked through the challenges and emerged happier than ever to do business together. Adversity creates strong bonds, lessons learnt, a stronger platform to build on.”
Besides IT, Kothavala has interests in social service and agriculture, too: he and his team have a social cause group, Sakaar, set up in 2001 to provide education and empowerment opportunities. “Specifics are decided on an individual basis,” he explains. He also runs Green Tokri, which produces high-quality salads and herbs, and supplies them at affordable prices to homes in Pune. “We’re in the early stages of changing people’s tastes and lifestyles,” he says. Diff’rent strokes!
Read the whole article