Video-Conferencing : Harnessing The Potential

The famous quote 'seeing is believing' has been given an all new definition
by the invasion of video-conferencing, as an integral part of all big
organizations.

Seeing v/s hearing

“Video-conferencing has a number of advantages over a normal verbal
communication on phone. Seeing a person while talking to them leads to effective
and fast communication and in turn good decision making,” quipped the partner.

Foreseeing the potential of this technology, which is still in its nascent
stage in India, Artek Enterprises decided to forayed into it.

“Two years back, a Chinese company, Kedcom signed us up for one of their
video-conferencing deployments. However, as the company didn't have a presence
in Indian market, the idea of taking this up as a vertical didn't quite take off
at that time,” recalled Anil Gupta, CEO, Artek Enterprises.

But, they never gave up on it and soon after, they deployed some projects for
the Indian army in collaboration with Sony. That particular project put them in
the race. It didn't work earlier because their main focus being the government
sector an established brand name was essential for the government which the
Chinese company didn't provide.

Anil Gupta CEO, Artek Enterprises New Delhi

“Our key vertical is government and they prefer well-established brands as
cost is not a major issue for them. Working with Sony gave us the required
push,” stated Gupta.

Not a smooth road

All new beginnings have their own new challenges. As Gupta stated, there
were three main challenges they faced at the start. Firstly, bandwidth was not
so freely available as it is now so it was difficult to sell the whole concept
as it can't work without it; secondly, the prices of equipment range so high
that convincing people to actually deploy and see far-reaching benefits was a
task in itself. Thirdly, explaining the concept to Indian customers who are not
very used to the idea was also challenging.

“It really took time to convince people and make them see the benefits. We
had to work out a lot of figures, marketing information, statistics and theories
to finally let them see what we were proposing,” stated Gupta.

Hope on the horizon

“Right now its just taking off,” said Gupta on being questioned about the
state of video-conferencing market. “With free availability of bandwidth it has
become so much easier to deploy video-conferencing-based solutions. And with
more and more people seeing its benefits we have set high hopes for this
technology,” he added.

As Artek focuses mainly on the government vertical, they have been involved
in various projects lately. They are associated with Tandberg now and have
deployed projects for the army, railways and national universities also.

In near future they are expecting a lot from it and hope to have a great part
of their turnover contributed by video-conferencing.

“As I mentioned earlier also, its just taking off now, there is a long way to
go,” reiterated Gupta.

Sonam Gulati

sonamg@cybermedia.co.in