Mobility

July 13, 2006
Kodiak takes on India

• Kodiak Networks offers advanced wireless systems to operators worldwide;
• Airtel, Idea recently deployed Kodiak's RTX System;
• Work communications tools are yet to touch the majority of businesses;
• SMBs are fueling much of the rapid wireless growth in India;
• Kodiak's core product is the RTX System, which is based upon its patented technology;
• Kodiak can address established as well as emerging markets;
• Kodiak, Motorola signed an agreement to embed AVS client on handsets.

NEW DELHI -- Since cellular technology was launched 21 years ago, wireless network operators worldwide have succeeded far beyond. While Kodiak Networks has been touting its push-to-talk solution in the US and Europe, it has found a ripe market for an entirely different type of service in South Asia. It just closed its second major deal for its group conferencing and group messaging applications in India, tapping into a market where demand for small business services appears to be high.

Kodiak recently landed a deal for its advanced voice services (AVS) platform with Airtel, the largest GSM provider in India with 15 million customers. Earlier, it revealed a similar deal with Idea, another Tier-1 GSM provider with seven million customers.

Due to lack of wireline infrastructure and services, voice conferencing and other work communications tools are yet to touch the majority of businesses in the country. At the same time, small businesses and entrepreneurs are fueling much of the rapid wireless growth in India. While many of Kodiak's customers in the West are launching its AVS services layered over its primary push-to-talk product, Kodiak has found that in India and other developing markets, those more basic business productivity tools are in much higher demand.

Though demand for push-to-talk isn't big in India now, it will eventually make a market for itself as an added feature to the instant communications platform Kodiak is building. The AVS platform is being deployed over Kodiak's Real Time Exchange, the standard server powering all of Kodiak's applications, including push-to-talk. The vendor is currently selling both carriers its Voice Bridge conferencing solution, presence application, group SMS solution and contact and group management portal. Kodiak is also developing a BREW application for the CDMA market.

Convergence Plus met Kris Patel, executive vice president, products and consumer support, and CTO, Kodiak Networks, on the way forward. Excerpts from the interview.

Convergence Plus: Give us an overview of the company.

Kris Patel: Kodiak Networks is the leading provider of advanced wireless systems to operators worldwide, enabling them to leverage their existing network infrastructure to deliver premium, voice services to end users. Kodiak has led the industry with innovative voice services applications that are proven to increase ARPU, improve revenue and reduce customer churn. The Kodiak solution operates on 2G, 2.5G and 3G networks and across all air interfaces including CDMA, GSM and UMTS.

CP: What is the company's core product offering? What distinguishes the Kodiak technology?

KP: The company’s core product is the Kodiak Real-time Exchange (RTX) System - a standards-compliant, all-IP, packet-switched solution based upon patented technology. Built on open architecture and designed to work over voice channels where voice quality and network efficiency are greatest, the RTX System includes a voice services platform and associated handset software. Kodiak has an open handset policy and partnerships with major global handset manufacturers. This approach ensures that subscribers have a wide choice of operating systems and handsets ranging from low-end to high-end phones, and can select the handsets that best meet their needs.

CP: Kodiak has had the honour of being one of the leading vendors in this particular sector (by Gartner). What is the projected size of the market you are pursuing?

KP: The market opportunity is quite vast. Kodiak offers GSM, CDMA and UMTS voice systems that can be easily scaled from independent operators to multinational carriers utilising 2G or 3G networks. When you couple this competency with our ability to enable advanced voice services on a number of delivery mechanisms including embedded handsets, open OS and Windows Mobile, as well as SIM-based devices, our target market continues to expand. Kodiak is uniquely positioned to address established as well as emerging markets.

CP: Kodiak has a joint licensing and marketing agreement with Samsung. How important are such partnerships and alliances for the company?

KP: In addition to Samsung, Kodiak Networks has relationships with leading handset vendors including Motorola, Sony Ericsson, LG, Kyocera, Sagem, TCL and Alcatel and Palm. We also work with leading SIM providers including Gemplus, Axalto and Sagem Orga for our Kodiak SIMpower deployments. Kodiak views these relationships as critical to our business model as they allow us to offer our operator customers the broadest selection of devices for deploying advanced voice services (AVS) to end users. Kodiak will continue to make announcements with new partners throughout the year.

CP: What have been the major milestones for Kodiak over the last 12 to 18 months?

KP: The major milestones for Kodiak have been with regards to customer deployment and handset partner agreements. We announced Cingular Wireless at the end of last year, the largest GSM operator in the US, as well as two leading GSM operators in India -- Airtel and IDEA, both of which launched with the Kodiak SIMpower solution. A significant accomplishment on the handset side, was signing an agreement with Motorola to embed the AVS client on its handsets. Motorola is a our major competitor on the system side. Having it recognise our solution penetration with operators worldwide and becoming a partner, was really a huge win for the company. We are also really pleased to have signed two new device partners, Sony Ericsson and Sagem Orga.

CP: What's the most exciting thing happening in your group in the year ahead?

KP: Kodiak will continue to make significant progress with regards to new customer deployments, system enhancements and handset vendor announcements. We look forward to sharing this news as it becomes public.

CP: At this point, what would you say are the biggest challenges for Kodiak?

KP: Kodiak entered the Push-to-Talk (PTT) market in late 2003 with the announcement of the Kodiak RTX, and then quickly followed up with our first carrier announcements in January of 2004. Since then, we have been re-defining this market space with a series of compelling advanced voice services applications that are designed to improve group communications. As a newcomer to this space, with a very differentiated service offering, we do find it challenging to be constrained by the industry’s definition of the PTT space. We remain optimistic that as we continue to bring on new operators who are offering innovative voice services to their customers, we’ll be successful in evolving the category of PTT, to the expanded offerings of AVS.