ACAS for Sky
As IT is related to the cyberspace, this IT company is very much
focusing on the airline companies as clients.
It may seem to be a normal happening in a sector which was still at an
embryonic stage. But when asked why they broke away from their earlier organization, CAS
Trading House, in 1994 and formed a separate unit of their own in the same line of
business, promoters of Computer Advance System (ACAS) Trading House (P) Ltd. mention the
difficulty for a group of people to continue a corporate thinking for long.
Perhaps that generalization may hold true also in other sectors of
Nepali Business. But the computer sector, now referred to by a more prestigious term, IT,
has advanced a lot, over the last decade. Ramesh Joshi, the Managing Director of ACAS,
recalls that his team had started as a DTP in 1986, as did many of their present
competitors, with an Apple computer that did not have even a hard drive.
Now that seems like a stone age story. And with the transformation of
IT sector Joshi’s company too has come a long way. "Computer Advance System has
set a new standard in after-sales-service and has emerged as one of the leading suppliers
of PCs, servers and peripherals and aspires to take the market leadership by the year
2002", declares the company brochure of ACAS.
Being the authorized distributor and/or reseller of products from major
global names such as Compaq, NEC, Brother, Panduit, Compex, Novell, Cisco and Riello, and
dealer-associate of equally prestigious names such as HP, Canon, Tripplite, Mita and
Epson, ACAS may achieve its target given the strong human resource base of 44 full-time
staff members and a long list of, what the company calls, "delighted customers"
from governmental, corporate educational and INGO/NGO sectors.
But, as Biplav Man Singh, Sales Director of the company, says, the
dealership of foreign products contributes very little to the revenue because of low
margins and heavy costs in providing before-and after-sales services. "Profitability
is higher in selling assembled computers", as he points out.
So ACAS rather went for software development and spun off a separate
software company (in 1999), Mandala Software Pvt.Ltd, in partnership with Bal Ram Pandey,
a common friend of the ACAS directors. The sister concern made news by developing Airlines
Management Information System (AIMS) in 1998 itself when the company was still in
embryonic stage. The software was first used by Buddha Air and later it was sold to other
eight airlines that are using it now.
The company has again made another news now by launching web-based
reservation system for airlines (see New Launches column in this issue). Next, the company
is planning to bring out a system for computerized check-in system at the airport check-in
counters, according to Pandey. Though the company’s target market focus is airline
business, these programs can be customized for other service and industry sectors such as
car rental, tickets for theatres and sports events. It is also being planned to sell those
softwares to foreign clients.
But, as Singh himself notes, to be acceptable in the foreign market you
must have a record of selling the software to at least one or two foreign or international
companies. For that ACAS and Mandala have to use their track record of selling their
services to Nepal offices of international organizations. In that they have the record of
selling the product to Air France and Family Health International (FHI). The budget
control system that was sold to FHI Nepal is next to be installed in that INGO’s
Bangkok office. The negotiations are going on, informs Singh.
The companies claim that as they use high-end platform and languages
costing a premium price, their software products are commensurately priced higher. The MIS
that the company developed for Jawalakhel Distillery in 1995 was in Novell Netware, Oracle
Workgroup, Developer 2000 platform. The same software is now being tuned for other
manufacturing industries as well. Same Novell, Oracle and Developer 2000 were used for the
custom MIS for Buddha Air. Another software developed for Kamaiya Information system
(KRIS) in Nepali was in Windows NT-SQL server-Visual Basic.
Older styles of design methodologies, such as structured
Analysis/Structured Design (SA/SD), lack features of client/server and GUI environment.
"We, thus, avoid to use these methods", says the company brochure.
Going by ACAS and Mandala experience, selling software to the private
sector is far better than to the government sector. The MIS they developed years ago for
Janak Educational Material Center, a state enterprise, is still not installed. However,
the government still can boost the IT sector, says Singh. "If it computerizes all the
ministries and departments as mentioned in the IT Policy, it would mean a tremendous
business", he notes.
By New Business Age Reporter
Airlines with Mandala’s AMIS
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Buddha Air |
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Lumbini Airlines |
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Gorkha Airways |
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Sangrila Air |
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Necon Air |
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Mountain Air |
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Yeti Airlines |
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Cosmic Air |
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Air France |
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Major Installations of Hardware by
ACAS
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u Asian Development Bank, Kathmandu
u MS Nepal
u Action Aid Nepal
u Nepal SBI Bank,
Biratnagar
u Khimti Hydro Power
Project
u NEA Training Center, Computerized
Billing Project
u Buddha Air
u Jawalakhel Distillery
u Morrison Knudsen International
Inc, Kaligandaki ‘A’ Hydropower Project
u Bio-gas support Programme
u Kantipur Publications |
Corporate Movement
 Rabindra
Man Shrestha has assumed the positions of CEO of Himalayan Snax and
Noodles (P) Ltd. and Director, Strategic Planning & Innovation, in
Gorkha Brewery (P) Ltd. (both Khetan Group companies) after returning
from Denmark completing a 15-month-long Executive MBA course in Scandinavian
International Management Institute. He was earlier the Director, Marketing
& Sales, in Gorkha Brewery .
DC Khanna, Executive Director and CEO of Nepal Arab Bank Limited
(Nabil) has retired from the bank where he worked for about 7 years. Similarly,
Mohmod Zaffer Hamid has also retired after about five years of
service as deputy executive director of Nabil. With this Nabil's Technical
Service Agreement with National Bank of Bangladesh is over. General Manager
Shovan Dev Panta, has now taken over as the CEO of the bank.
Sanjeev Pradhan has joined Himal Media (Pvt) Ltd.
as Circulation Manager.
Navendu Mathur has joined Hotel Soaltee Crowne
Plaza as Sales Manager.
Sambhu Guragain has been promoted to Senior Sales Manager
of Himalmedia (P) Ltd. where he was earlier Sales Manager.
Avijit Chaturvedi has been appointed F&B Manager of Hotel De L‘Annapurna,
a Taj Group hotel, replacing Sanjaya Sharma who left the Group recently.
Chaturvedi is associated with Taj Group for last 18 years.
Manoj Loya, General Manager, Sales & Marketing,
of Chaudhary Group has been transferred to Delhi office to look after
Wai Wai noodles market. He is with Chaudhary Group for last three years.
Meanwhile, K.R. Swaminathan has joined Chaudhary
Group as its Deputy General Manager, Sales. He has been is sales and marketing
field for more than 14 years in India and was in Calcutta before coming
to Nepal.
Corrigendum
Pravin Mukhia who joined McCANN-ERICKSON recently was
earlier Marketing Coordinator in Pepsi-Cola Nepal, not Marketing Consultant
as inadvertently reported in our June issue.
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