Company of the Month

Radio frequency identification technology (RFID) has revolutionized the way tracking and security requirements are handled the world over. RFID is an automatic identification method by reading a code through radio waves. This is then matched with remotely stored data to obtain the information regarding the item. This enables tag reading from a greater distance, even in harsh environments. RFID has applications in retail sector, libraries, hospitals, security, product tracking in industries, inventory systems and a host of other applications.

‘Orizin Technologies Private Limited’, the Mysore-based RFID solutions company was incubated at NirmaLabs, the private incubator at Ahmedabad. They have strengthened their foothold at an appreciable rate in the last 18 months by providing a good alternative to imported technologies. They have established their ‘presence’ in the ‘presence’ of strong competition from the major IT companies in India. Their customers include Medium & Jewellery retailing, Large Retail companies, large manufacturing houses, OEMs Software houses, large libraries and hospitals.

Orizin is the Company of the month for achieving success in the Indian market in a relatively unexplored area. Orizin is also the company of the month for its future global aspirations and strong and swift strides towards this.

Orizin was founded by the duo of Prashant and Palaniappan, alumni of NIT Trichy. Palaniappan, who worked for Analog Devices earlier, acts as the technological booster with his rich industry experience. He is the CTO and is grooming the R&D and product development aspects. Prashant, an Ex-Wipro employee, leads from the business side and steers the day-to-day business operations, finance, customer relationships and growth. Together they have now built Orizin to a place where they are poised to be the leading providers of RFID technology in India.

The Organization architecture is crafted towards bringing out the best in their personnel. The founders have created an open work atmosphere and independent yet cohesive functioning. It is no wonder then that we find a highly motivated work force in Orizin. Their founders rate their motivated work force as the topmost factor in their success story. They form the core strength of this highly technology intensive domain and continue to contribute their best and beyond.

Orizin has subscribed to the philosophy of running with or ahead of the time. This is essential in their business where technology is the King.

Orizin provides complete business solutions for their customers with RFID technology needs. This includes both the hardware and the software integration. Their core strength lies in the RFID hardware technology wherein they have successfully researched, designed, developed and manufactured world-class RFID hardware products. They are hoping to have a few patents under their belt very soon. Orizin has a team of dedicated software professionals who work with the customers to integrate the RFID output to their business solutions. This will ensure that the customer will be ready to go ahead after their ‘encounter’ with Orizin. They will not have to depend on other third parties before they start achieving their targeted productivity from their solutions. This has also become Orizin’s customer Value proposition according to their founders.

Sharing their experience, the founders felt that the most important aspect to obtain funding is to arouse the interest of the investors. They reveal that they did face some initial setbacks in the funding, but now they share a great relation with their investor. ‘Billionways fund’ promoted by Mr. Venkat Rajendran -founder of Decaanet Designs-, has acquired 40% stake in Orizin. Mr. Rajendran is on the Board of Orizin and the company has benefited from his mentoring by obtaining network connections, motivation, inspirations and quality inputs to improve business. Mr. Tyagarajan, Chief Executive of Nirma Labs, also serves on Orizin’s Board and provides strategic guidance to the company.

The path has not been easy for Orizin. Among the challenges, they faced were the low awareness levels of the technology in the Indian market and the latent hesitations on the customers side for technology switch. They are working on it by establishing their presence, popularizing relevance of the technology and brand building exercises. They are also concentrating on building POCs and mature business partners.

For the future Orizin is concentrating on obtaining certifications for their hardware products and   building partnerships with OEM for their products. They want to achieve at least 6% of the domestic market by this fiscal year.

Orizin, named so because its founders want to remember their start (origin) has a mission to be the leading RFID provider by 2010. They want to be the market leaders with a global presence. Its founders find the journey challenging and exciting. They are now looking at their dream taking shape.

They want to see themselves in another 5 years as “A truly world class company with offices at least in 50 countries of the world and product and services meeting global standards”. If you ask their Mantra for this, they have this to say, “The only way to succeed is to believe in yourself.”