Gearing up with IT industry's growth, Prisma Global's Shreeram Iyer

Information technology solutions company, Prisma Global is known for providing specialised IT solutions to healthcare, image recognition, security, business intelligence and augmented reality sectors. Its domain expertise, technical excellence and unique culture help clients to build futuristic enterprise and have a dedicated Excellence Centre predominantly catering to Business Intelligence.

Prisma Global has introduced a new breakthrough technology, snap2life ® which connects the print with digital at a click of a button and is set to change the advertising scenario in India. This will prove to be a game changer as it is capable of connecting the printed communication to desired digital media paradigms for delivering measurable engagement to consumers. Prisma Global with its avatar of 4th generation technology of ‘Image Recognition and Augmented Reality’ aims at highlighting the new wave in the advertising & marketing space and is set to transform the way companies reach out to their target audiences.
In conversation with Adgully, Shreeram Iyer, Chairman and Group CEO, Prisma Global threw some light on various initiatives by the company.

Adgully: Give us a sense of the market that you are in and your percentage share in it?

Shreeram Iyer: We are into the globally multi-faceted market because of the variety of products, software and services we offer. We have a mixed percentage of market shares that may vary from time to time.

AG: Sir, you have close to two decades of experience in IT. How do you see the industry growing and how has it evolved over the years? Also how your expertise has contributed to the growth of Prisma Global?

SI: The Information Technology (IT) sector has undergone tremendous changes in the last two decade. It would be difficult to cover all areas but in a nutshell. When I had begun my career, internationally we had to start the selling process by India selling, to the quality of our skills, to our infrastructure in the metros, etc. And in India, we had to start from explaining the concept of automation first before getting into explaining the computer and its uses. Today, internationally we are widely accepted and even sometimes looked at with some amount of jealousy. Also in India now, the educated population is ready to accept technology on its face value and utility content rather than a nice-to-have wow factor. Of course to achieve this Indian IT industry has had to learn, adapt and evolve it on how to do business, and is still in the process before we can be considered leaders globally in all aspects of the industry.

Personally, I believe I have been one of the drivers in educating the markets both locally and globally, to bring about the awareness as mentioned above, and this experience should be instrumental in driving the operations of the organization as we delve into our major global expansion mode.

AG: Shed some light on the amalgamated form of Augmented Reality and Image Recognition.

SI: Prisma Global is set to change the advertising scenario in India with the introduction of snap2life® - a breakthrough technology which creates a direct link between an image and the corresponding online content. Snap2Life amalgamates two very distinct technologies of IR (Image Recognition) & AR (Augmented Reality), thereby providing a very powerful medium for the advertising industry to reach out more information to the users, as well as in some cases in enable the shortest/fastest route from the advertisement to the point of sale.

Snap2Life is a technology wherein you use the mobile device for snapping or scanning an image to get desired output though our dedicated software and search engine. It is a breakthrough technology which creates a direct link between an image and the corresponding online content. This will prove to be a game changer as it is capable of connecting the printed communication to desired digital media, for delivering measurable engagement to consumers.

AG: How do you see the technology growing and being accepted in India?

SI: The AR technology is a growing concept globally and has just begun to be more widely accepted in India. The response to the concept has been incredible and we almost have our entire prospect base giving us additional utilitisation scenarios and application in their domain vertical or industry segment. This in itself has given us a lot of confidence in the market acceptability.

India being a dream market for most of the global companies predominately because of the sheer size of the market along with the acceptance in technology arena, Augmented Reality shall be a good new age technology that will revive the diminishing print media and give the branding and advertising industry a new tool to showcase and play with.

AG: How Indian industries and sectors see themselves to incorporate / implement this technology in their services?

SI: India is an emerging economy and is expected to become a superpower in coming decade. Even with recession at peak in last few years, Indian economy showed a considerable growth. With globalization, Indian markets are expanding day by day with an ever increasing competition. But having said this, the recession has made the industry a lot more choosy in terms of spending on advertisements and promotions only if there are visible returns for the spend. Also, at the same time, the customers are becoming more and more conscious and techno savvy and are on guard for investing their money.

Our technology will provide the customers and industries an out of box tool and strategy, establishing more transparency, convenience and will save a lot of energy and resources which is the need of the hour. Also the commixture of Image Recognition and Augmented Reality will open many new doors for creativity in all sectors.

AG: How robust is the market and how does Prisma Global stand ahead of that curve?

SI: All industry segments are our market, which puts us in the unique situation of approaching the couple of industries which are performing well and having some ad-spend in their budgets. This apart we are also approaching the media and print companies directly, for them to position these services for their clients. This in a way insures our business model from the vagaries of any particular industry vertical.
In terms of technology, due to our global exposure we are able to cumulate our experiences from across the various markets and are able to provide the best of solutions relevant to each industry.

AG: What is the USP of your products and how do you deal with competition (if any)?

SI: Our USP is the our own proprietary software for IR ( Image Recognition) along with a special algorithm based search crawler which has been used by various corporates, government bodies , intelligence agencies and research organizations. We have also built synergistic skills for Augmented Reality, through our other verticals like gaming and animation.

AG: What trends do you see going further down the line in the market that you are in?

SI: The trend of the market we are in keeps changing according to time and new technologies being invented. The more innovative the market, the more flexible it is. Down the line, the market we are in is expected to grow and expand with much more zest and innovation, more so in the semi-developed nations like India, South Africa, Middle East, etc. Also new visual delivery mobile devices, like the wearable computer screen, or holographic displays, etc., could also alter the landscape dramatically.

AG: What kind of target do you have in the coming year and what strategies you think would help you achieve it?

SI: As mentioned earlier we can practically reach out to all the industries. Currently we are focusing on the media companies, automobile sector, real estate sector, etc. Our prime focus now is to introduce the concept in Indian market and get some premier organisations inculcated into using this concept. DNA newspaper has already recognized the potential and strength of our tool and has launched ‘DNA IT’ and is enhancing it more.

Strategy is required when we have to speak for our products to the customers but our product speaks for itself and makes everything transparent. So our strategy is simple, show the functioning of the software.

AG: Shed some light on the clients you have in your kitty and also some of your best works up till now?

SI: We have a long German client list, viz. Mercedes AMG, Egdar, Vivantes, Charite, Vooh, A. Lange and Sohne, etc. In India so far we have tied up with DNA to launch their augmented reality application known as “DNA IT”. Talks are on with premier players of various industry sectors and soon they will be out too with this technology.

AG: Where do you see yourself in the next 3 years?

SI: In the next 3 years we are quite hopeful of becoming a premier IT Company providing unique marketing tools on mobile devices covering all industrial sectors.