KOCHI: As recently as 2006, booking an LPG refill used to be one helluva task: the distributors’ phones are endlessly busy or no one would attend the call. Even if you are lucky to register for a refill, the gas cylinder is delivered to someone else who is either close to the distributor or to others who pays a higher amount in the black market.
Things changed dramatically following the introduction of IVRS-based (Interactive Voice Response System) when one of the major public sector oil marketing companies rolled out the system for the first time in the country in Kerala in 2006. Suddenly, lakhs of customers could book their LPG refill by dialling a centralized number, eliminating black marketing and pilferage in the system.
At the epicenter of this transformation is a Kochi-based IT company Prudent Technologies (Prutech), founded by three software engineers from Wipro, who were also batchmates at the College of Engineering, Trivandrum (CET): two from electronics stream while the third from computer science - the college’s first batch in the stream.
The next 13 years have seen Prudent Technologies involved in some prestigious works for the banks (customers can enquire his bank account through a toll-free number, for instance), online payment services for BSNL and UIDAI integration services, among other things. “We were the pioneer to offer missed call alert globally in the telecom industry when we provided the service for Escotel back in 2001,” said Geejo George, executive director and one of the founders of Prudent Technologies.
The missed call service used to be an SMS alert received by a subscriber about a called missed while the phone was out of coverage or switched off. Geejo along with his colleagues Sivadasan PK and C Pradeep Kumar founded Prudent Technologies in 1997 with zero investment thanks to the support from Wipro, where the trio was working. “Wipro promoted entrepreneurship among its employees,” explained Geejo, pointing out that some of the big IT companies were founded by software professionals from Wipro.
Prudent Technologies was founded, the company was, in fact, doing a project for the Department of Telecom (DoT) for computerized telephone bills. In less than 22 years, the company now employs over 120 people across the country, winning accolades for many landmark initiatives: The IVR system for the oil marketing company winning the President’s award for the best e-governance application in 2008. Prutech was also one of the first aggregators to integrate with UIDAI for two oil marketing companies for direct subsidy transfer, impacting the life of 120 million households. One of the earliest projects includes providing election results and the SSLC exam results through SMS on the phone.
Sanjay Chacko, executive director - commercial engagements of Prutech explained that their services are indirect, where the telecom companies use its platform exclusively for servicing their enterprises’ customers. He also informed that Prutech is integrated with all major incumbent operators in India.
Women’s Helpline (during an emergency), Disaster Intimation Services (location-based service), and other public intimation services for state and central government public intimation services, etc are other major engagements of the company.
Geejo said the most satisfying project Prudent Technologies was involved was a service to rescue people during last August’s floods in Kerala. “Under the service, a call to a four-digit toll-free help the rescuers to find the flood-trapped people through the google map. The nearest rescue operator will get the alert through the service,” he said, pointing out many lives were saved through the ‘Flood Relief’ service. “We did not charge anything for the project.”
The company is also helping e-Commerce, taxi-hailing, food aggregating companies to provide virtual-number privacy services for customers while providing privacy to the customers' numbers when contacting drivers or delivery boys rendering services to the end customers. “The calls are managed on our communication platform. “We handle above 300 million requests (30 crore) on a monthly basis,” explained Geejo.
At a time when big data analytics and artificial intelligence had not entered the diction of the tech world, this small company has been using these tech tools to make life easy for the common man.