The global software market is projected to reach $1789.14 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of over 11 percent. This ascent can be attributed to the surge of disruptive innovations and ground-breaking ideas emerging across diverse business sectors. A major contributor to this transformative wave has been the startup ecosystem, which is flourishing with technological creativity. However, the incubation of innovative ideas and the implementation of effective monetization strategies remain a challenge. Enter Zapcom, a company that started its operations in 2013. Taking the lead, Zapcom has been actively incubating technology startups, equipping them not only with technological prowess but also with strategic insights vital for the sustainability of their emerging businesses. The CIO Insider India magazine engaged in a conversation with Kishore Pallamreddy, CEO, Zapcom to know more about the company and the value it is adding to the business ecosystem as a whole.

Could you give us an overview of Zapcom and the kind of technology expertise that it bringsto the table?
Zapcom is a 10-year-old global product and technology services company. It was originally started in Bay Area, San Francisco, and around the same time, the Indian office was also established in Bangalore. The primary idea behind the establishment of the company was to incubate innovative ideas. We were taking up start-up ideas and developing and marketing them to make these ideas sustainable in the market. During this process, we incubated a few start-ups both through seed funding and technology know-how. The core leadership team of the company including me has working experience in multi-billion dollar technology

companies across the globe and we wanted to provide that business expertise to these new companies.

The company believed that this would add value to the entire start-up ecosystem of the nation. It is a 360-degree approach that we have adopted to develop and market technology products and services. Zapcom went on doing this for the initial years until we decided to scale up the operations and started providing technology expertise to the travel and hospitality industry. We started developing successful partnerships across the globe through excellence in engineering delivery. Today, the company is working with 500+ people globally with two primary offices in the US that are located in California and Texas (HQ). Zapcom also has multiple operating centers across the globe like Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Costa Rica. We are planning on opening a delivery center based out of Europe and also in the Middle East. Currently, the company has clients all across the globe with 90 percent of them from North America.

We have a travel recommendation engine that we developed in the early incubation stage of the company for travel personalization and review intelligence dedicated to businesses in the hospitality industry. We have used advanced AI and Natural Language Processing for the creation of this product. We have also developed a shopping engine for the US market and it can also be considered as one of Zapcom's flagship products which has also been developed using AI and NLP. Apart from these we also have IP rights for some of the other products that we have developed until now that includes tech platforms for banking solutions.

How has the company been able to become successful in the technology product and services market?
We are a technology partner to one of the leading home services providers in the US which has 23 brands, operates in over 40 territories and 5000 franchises. The challenge here was that the client wanted technology support for different brands and franchises which required complex integration on multiple existing systems with third-party software. As the technology partner, Zapcom had to consolidate all points of sales for this client thus providing Omni channel capabilities for all the customers and all kinds of transactions. A few aspects make us stand out as a product development company, the first of which is the culture that revolves around product development and design thinking and working on customer centricity with a global mind-set.

What is the road ahead for the company? Where do you see it in the next five years?
We want to become the best-in-class technology products and solutions provider globally. In the coming five years we are aiming for a 10x growth in revenue and 7x growth in business. We are also aiming at acquiring clientele from Europe and other geographies across the world. We are immensely committed to our employees and shareholders and developing Zapcom's intellectual properties that can be monetized with sustainability. Last but not least; we plan on acquiring specific technology ventures according to our growth plans when the right opportunity comes across.