C1 India has become synonymous with e-procurement in the country. How did you manage this feat?
We started off as a franchisee of Commerce One, a $30 million American company focused on private sector procurement automation. When we came to India, we saw that the private sector was still not geared to automate and make its procurement system transparent enough. But we saw a lot of opportunities to automate procurement in the government. Along with BHEL, we approached the central vigilance commission (CVC) to allow us to do a pilot project. We did an event on reverse auction to hire an investment banker and showed a saving of 80 percent in the deal to the government.
 

In India, Andhra Pradesh was the first state to initiate e-procurement under the leadership of the then chief minister Chandrababu Naidu. There used to be a lot of malpractices in the tendering system; at times, a company would even steal the tender box so that nobody else could submit their tenders. We were also threatened by a group of suppliers. Some 25-30 people stormed into our office with guns and threatened our staff; so we had to seek security for about 12 months. The state government was, however, very supportive and committed.
 

Now, nobody can take the tender box away. Initially, e-procurement was not part of the mission mode projects as envisaged by the prime minister’s office. But after our initial successes, we approached the cabinet secretary, who gave us his nod, and that is how e-procurement became part of the national e-governance plan. Now a large amount of business is happening in a very transparent manner and within the next 10 to 20 years this is the only way the government will do procurement. E-procurement will soon become the only way the government does business. It is taking painfully slow for the process the reach all the levels. But once procurement gets totally automated, it will bring about a revolution in the country. Once people are unable to manipulate the tenders, everybody will get to focus on just the policies. We will get more thinking politicians and more thinking bureaucrats who will think about the policies rather than tenders. I think that will bring in thinking politics which will propel the nation forward.

The Andhra Pradesh government’s e-procurement project has won many awards. What is so special about the project?
The state has made e-procurement mandatory. The special thing was that it started doing a huge volume of transactions. Every day they do about 600-odd tenders and they have processed tenders worth Rs 3,00,000 crore.

Who are your other clients?
We started out with BHEL and we have also worked with the Gas Authority of India, Delhi government, Gujarat government, HPCL, BPCL, Indian Oil Corporation, Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals, Indian Navy, MMTC and the State Bank of India. We have international clients as well, for example in the United Kingdom, Sri Lanka and Oman. Recently, we won a project in Kenya too.

What kind of services do you offer?
We are a product-orientated company with two development divisions, one focused on the dot net technology and the other on the Java open source technology. The majority of our staff is on the client location, handholding and helping them, helping the buyers/suppliers as all new users have to be trained to use the system. So we develop and implement solutions. For the open source technology, we use the IBM platform and the dot net technology is on Microsoft platform.

Is it a long haul from e-tendering to e-procurement?
E-tendering is limited to the tendering part but procurement has to do with the preparation even before the tender is thought to be done. For example, when you want to procure a computer you need to think of all the possible options. Then you consolidate the requirements of various departments. There is also the post-tendering process wherein you place the order with the supplier and then you place a contract and then you do contract management. There are a lot of delays in the execution of government contracts, so there has to be a lot of contract monitoring and finally the invoice and the payment. This entire gamut is e-procurement. Governments are still focused on e-tendering but I guess they will go through the next few steps to complete the e-procurement system.

What are the other advantages besides transparency?
E-procurement also increases efficiency. What used to take six months on average to finalise a tender does not take more than 15 days now. Ideally, you can do it in three days. The largest tender that we have done is about Rs 3,800 crore and the smallest would be Rs 15,000. That’s the range we have handled. The supplier community is even happier than the government because whenever the bids are open they can see the bids of all the suppliers. So they get the confidence that the government is being fair to them and also that they would get the decisions within a month. Earlier, they were worried about keeping the working capital blocked and machinery idle for six months. So they are more forthcoming, the participation has gone up leading to more competition and the prices have fallen.

What is the difference between working with the government and the private sector?
Unlike the government, the private sector does not have a very structured way of procurement. It cuts a few steps, which makes automation of procurement processes difficult.

What are your expectations from the government?
I think the government departments should be given clear targets. Right now they have just instructed the departments to start e-tendering. So a lot of organisations have done five tenders, 10 tenders just to show that they are doing it. I think the government needs to push them a bit more and say that, maybe, 40 percent or 50 percent of procurement should start going through the e-tendering system.

Is C1 India involved in any other mission mode project besides e-procurement?
The only other nationwide project that we have done is Kisan Knowledge Administrative System, which is linking all agricultural universities to a portal where the information can be pooled and then connected to a call centre where farmers from all over the country can call. This project is now being rolled out through the common service centres all across the country.