In January this year, 8,000 laptop users at PricewaterhouseCoopers, India, got a small software update. To help protect and back up critical data, the management consultancy had installed Druva inSync, a software package developed by a trio of firsttime entrepreneurs: Jaspreet Singh, Ramani Kothandaraman and Milind Borate.
Druva inSync
Founded in: 2007
Founders: Jaspreet Singh, Ramani Kothandaraman, Milind Borate
What makes it cool: Succeeded in a short span in a field dominated by heavyweights. Built up an enviable client list spanning continents
Rating: 8
Mirchandani's take: It is present in a segment which is seeing a lot of activity. The key to its performance will be staying ahead of the competition. The market has a lot of potential and the products are global in nature. |
Druva's target is a $400 million market for data back-up services. Technologically, backing up laptops is much harder as compared to desktops and servers because laptops are not confined to a fixed location. "It calls for a specialised solution, which is bandwidth efficient, easy to use and completely non-intrusive to the user," says Singh, Druva's CEO.
The road to success was long and hard for this Pune-based firm. It did not have a single customer for a year after it started in 2007. But the founders used that time to add muscle to the product, by devising a technology called data deduplication, which hastened the back-up process. The result was a 90 per cent saving in bandwidth, time and storage.
Today, Druva has around 650 customers, including HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank in India, and the Marine Corps and NASA in the United States. It gets around 35 per cent of its revenues from the US and 40 per cent from Europe, where it counts Siemens and Schlumberger among its clients.
