www.siliconindia.com April 21, 2000 Savera Systems delivers Web-based billing India Abroad News Service, New York The Web-based billing business is all set for a new dawn, thanks to the Indian American-run firm Savera Systems Incorporated. Inderpal Singh Mumick, 36, who co-founded the New Jersey-based private firm with Pradeep Chetal and Ramarao Kanneganti, is confident of carving a niche in Internet billing along with solving some of the problems that billing systems face. "Chetal and I came up with the name. We thought of it as a new beginning or new day in the billing area. We intend changing the landscape of billing, the dawn of a new era," he told India Abroad News Service. Savera, with revenues of close to $10 million, has close to 50 employees, many of them fresh out of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Savera claims to deliver innovative, 100 per cent Web-based billing solutions to Internet provision (IP) and telecom industries. It markets solutions as hosted applications, via an application service provider or ASP, or as licensed products. Savera is a founding member of Internet Protocol Detail Record (IPDR). Before Savera, Mumick, who holds a doctorate in computer science from Stanford and is a graduate of IIT, Delhi, spent a good time in billing at AT&T Bell Labs as principal technical staff member. He did pioneering work on the Sunrise research project at Bell Labs which led to numerous billing initiatives at AT&T and Lucent. Mumick is known for his work on materialised views technology and is the author of eight issued patents, more than ten patent pending applications and some 40 technical papers in leading journals and conferences. "Billing appears a very simple thing when you get it in the mail, but in the business field it is a complex issue and there are some genuine problems. We saw the advent of the Internet and saw the possibility of solving through the Internet some of the problems," Mumick said. So his IIT associates and old AT&T colleagues got together and brainstormed to found Savera in 1997. Changing billing plans and pricing plans, and buying and installing billing systems were some major problems "and we saw the Internet as a way of solving that," so Mumick et al set about it with some success. "Savera put forward 'Mareti,' a technology which allows you to change pricing plans over the Internet. Savera recently also began using the Internet for a new delivery model, "where a company does not even have to have the hardware to use our billing system and can just take it from our data centre and Web site," Mumick said. Installation time is cut down to one-third and costs are significantly lowered. "You still have to incorporate the company's data and business language, but they don't have to buy the hardware, or instal software. All pieces come with the Web browser, and even my five year old knows how to use the Web browser," said Mumick. Some of Savera's first clients were Mach, an Alabama-based company that deals in roaming wireless calls, Tele2, and most recently, American International Group's Telecom subsidiary. Mumick said he "actively" recruited staff from India, fresh graduates out of the IITs at Delhi, Kanpur, and Chennai. Savera also has an office near London and is talking to potential partners in India. Mumick loves playing bridge, raquetball and squash, although, he admits, "it's reduced a lot since the company was founded". But he still keeps complex puzzles around him in office and tries doing a little at a time. In Savera's team, he says, he has two Indian national level bridge players and one chess player. www.siliconindia.com