Delhi-based Interactive HelpDesk provider Yonyx bags IBM SmartCamp India 2012 award

New Delhi-based Yonyx Infomedia Pvt Ltd, which developed a cloud-based Interactive HelpDesk platform, has bagged the IBM SmartCamp India 2012 award. Yonyx Infomedia beat Wifinity, Imaginate, WinHire and LinkSmart in the finals, after being shortlisted from 180 entries in the event, aimed at identifying early-stage entrepreneurs.

With Interactive HelpDesk platform,  instead of calling the customer-care support customers can directly visit the website of the enterprise and get directions and solutions from there through a series of flow charts published on the website.

"Yonyx's platform helps establish an interaction between a customer and an agent through the web, akin to IVR through telephone," said Sanjay Bajaj, co-founder and CEO, Yonyx.

Bajaj claims that its platform helps companies reduce customer hold-time to zero and thereby cut cost by 90 per cent. "Interactive HelpDesk helps automate the manual process of guiding customers through trouble-shooting help along multiple diagnostic pathways. Through a handful of flowcharts, it is easy for the customer to browse or search the Symptoms Catalog. The customer can interactively traverse a diagnostic pathway for their specific problem and circumstance. While traversing they consume incremental multimedia guidance that is exactly relevant to them." Since it is a cloud- based solutions there is no need of new servers.

Yonyx charges the client on a per-use-basis by a customer. The company has an office in the US apart from New Delhi and has three small and medium customers in the US and India using its platform. "Persistent Systems in Pune has deployed our product for intra-desk support and we are now getting calls from big software players in India," Bajaj said. Yonyx is also working with computer education company NIIT to provide similar platform for educational services. It is now targeting large customers in India as well as foreign markets.

Vijaya Kumar Ivaturi, a panelist and a member of Indian Angel Network, said, "Its multimedia flow chart based on graph theory is novel and rigorous. The opportunity segment is extendable to voice support teams and others which are knowledge-based tree traversal using ordinary profiles," Ivaturi said. Treetle Software's Pankaj Dugar, another panelist, pointed at the  maturity of the model and the ability to represent its value proposition very quickly.

An investor, who did not wish to be identified, echoed Dugar's views that Yonyx had better prospects among others. "For Yonyx, the market is so big and it has bagged a handful of customers already. Their team is strong, too. From an investor perspective, I find they can really differentiate in these two things."

Bajaj is a Silicon Valley veteran with nearly 25 years of experience in various technology firms including NeXT, Synopsys, Rolm, and multiple startups including Vianeta, interHDL & Silicon Architects. He holds an MSEE degree from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and a BTech degree in Electronics & Electrical Communications Engineering (ECE) from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur.

Nixon Michaelangelo, the co-founder and CTO of Yonyx, is a product architect, product manager and developer. He has 15 years of technology experience in telecom,  video & document management industries, in which he has an US patent.

Bangalore-based Wifinity, an energy management solutions provider, won the popular choice award at the event for its integrated and customizable solutions for energy management in buildings. A single intuitively designed user interface which can be accessed on mobile phone, computer or the Wifinity dashboard, gives the customer a real time view of all systems which includes energy consumption, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, etc.

Hyderabad-based Imaginate, founded by Hemanth Satyanarayana and Pavan Kosavaraju, developed TrialAR, an intelligent digital apparel and jewellery trial room platform. TrialAR is an augmented reality-based e-commerce platform that can be deployed at shopping malls and boutiques, aimed at assisting shoppers to try out a variety of items by just standing in front of a digital display or an electronic mirror in the kiosks put up at shopping malls.

Bangalore-based startup WinHire offers a solution that makes recruitment process easy. Its video social recruitment portal helps job seekers to connect, interact and apply for thousands of MNC jobs simultaneously. From the video interview the job aspirant uploaded into the WinHire site, the client can get an idea about the candidate on his communications and other skills. This helps a client to reduce the burden of taking the preliminary round of face-to-face and save a lot of time and cost.

LinkSmart, another startup based out of Bangalore,  came up with a security solution, smartDNA, which ensures that the security credentials cannot be replicated even by the insider or solutions provider and thus provides the best level of insider threat protection.

Mauricio Sucasas da Costa, ISV and Developer Relations, Growth market Unit, IBM and Russel A Stamets, an advisor to entrepreneurs and VC investors in Asia and Silicon Valley, Parag Dhol of Inventus Capital Partners, Ranjith Menon of IDG Ventures, Ravi Trivedi of Southeast Interactive Technology funds, Sarabjeet Singh of Seedfunds, Sijo Kuruvila George of Startup Village, Shristi Sofat of Responsys and serial entrepreneur Vaibhav Tiwari were among the panelists.

(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)