This week, we had the opportunity to talk with Amit Sharma, the founder of
Relicons Technologies. We discussed their beginnings, the future of their industry, and how has the Covid-19 pandemic affected their business.
What is Relicons?
Relicons is a full service web solutions company, providing Reliable and Consistent web services to customers globally.
With 17+ Years & 4500+ satisfied customers Relicons Technologies have been providing Reliable and Affordable Website and E-Commerce Development, Cloud Hosting, Corporate email & Web Security solutions to our customers across the globe. It is currently one of the longest serving web solutions companies in the Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore.
Please describe the story behind the company: What sparked the idea, and how has it evolved so far?
Relicons was envisioned in July 2002 as a pure Web Design and Development Company, aiming to provide cost effective and cutting edge web design solutions and web application development services to its customers.
It was the time of the dot-com boom and everyone wanted to jump the bandwagon, and with minimal entry barriers anyone can start offering web design services. But very few actually took the needs and want of customers seriously and think of building long term sustainable relationships which are mutually beneficial.
Most of the customers we initially onboarded were unsatisfied customers from other places. That is when we realized that if we are in here for a long haul, we need to think and act Long-term and be more customer-centric and value-centric.
Right from pre-sales to post delivery to ongoing support, we need to ensure we give the best user-experience to our customers and they feel at home with us. Hence, we at Relicons have invested heavily in building systems and processes and trainings to ensure that.
With that ethos I mind, Relicons has always kept building relationships, ahead of business and that continues till date.
Having said that we have also upgraded ourselves from time-to-time and added more and more services to our portfolio keeping in mind the changing customer demands.
How do you envision the future of your industry?
It’s a known fact that the Internet, Software and Cloud industry has always been an extremely dynamic industry. Whether you like it or not, Things can and will change overnight.
It’s very difficult to predict the future, I don’t think anyone can, we can only guess. Technologies come and go in a blink. The good ones stay longer and evolve.
From the days of static html websites, we have now come to websites where chat-bots can answer 80% of standard queries of a customer 24 x 7 without tiring.
But going with the trend I see
automation of processes – right for on-boarding, service delivery, payments and customer support will gain momentum to propel companies to the next level while keeping costs down. It means using advanced Artificially Intelligent and secure software technologies to cloud based installations, all put together will shape the future. Relicons is well aware of it and working towards integrating this as part of its service portfolio.
Which trends and technologies do you find to be particularly intriguing these days?
There are many but the two technologies that I find especially intriguing is the advancements in
Payment solutions and
Chat-bots.
Regarding
Payment solutions, In India specially, the UPI (Unified payment interface), a 24×7 operating, instant and mobile based bank account to bank account money transfer service, was launched in 2016 and in just 4 years, it currently powers 1+ billion payment transactions per month. That’s huge.
And with its API based approach, companies have made very innovative mobile app based payment solutions around it, thus making even the smallest of a road-side tea seller to large companies accept payment instantly and digitally.
It has made the lives of many extremely easy with those days of cash payments and delayed mail-in checks almost gone. It has given many businesses, including ours, faster cash flows and greater user experience. We at Relicons are also working actively towards implementing similar solutions for our customers.
Chat-bots on the other hand are changing the game of pre-sales and support delivery systems drastically. As earlier mentioned, as per a recent survey chatbots can now answer 80% of standard user queries without any in-person involvement and with so many platforms available; developing your own chatbot isn’t very difficult these days.
Also by 2022, companies can expect up to $8 billion cost savings from the use of chatbots conversations. Imagine how the fantastic user experience and speed of answer delivery can impact an organization’s topline and build trust with their customers. Relicons has been using chat-bots for its customer support and sales queries for a long time now and is planning to offer it as a service to its customers.
How has COVID impacted your customers and business?
“In the middle of great difficulty, lies great Opportunity” is the motto at Relicons currently. We are an optimistic company.
As we are a service company and our growth depends on customer growth, hence COVID has definitely impacted business. Contracts are being re-negotiated to make it easy, both for us and our customers and this is likely to go on for sometime till things settle down.
Having said that, we at Relicons are thinking out of the box and proactively planning and implementing new services that customers will need in coming times, for example hosting their accounting, ERP and other applications on cloud, online payment collection solutions to increase cash flows.
We are also Re-thinking and Re-designing our core services of server hosting, web and Ecommerce solutions to suit the new normal and make it more cost effective, more value based and attractive to our customers.
