When Kamal Budhabati, a science graduate born and raised in India, came to work in Kenya his eyes were set on starting his own business one day. After five months of employment, a friend in the banking sector asked him to develop some software for their bank. This was Kamal’s lucky break. The success of the temporary work encouraged him to quit his job and start his own firm called Craft Silicon.
Today, ten years down the line, Craft Silicon has grown to employ 200 staff members and is the largest software exporter in the country. Craft Silicon is an information technology company specializing in software outfit powering. The firm provides the operations of numerous financial institutions in Kenya and abroad.
It offers integrated financial software solutions to banks, microfinance institutions and cooperative societies worldwide in 40 countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Latin America. Craft Silicon’s services include Banking Software, Micro Finance software, Savings Cooperative Internet Banking, Switching Software Products, Mobile Banking and other financial software products.
Last year the firm recorded a turn over of Ksh.600 million (7,434,944 USD$). Over 90 percent of the firms revenue comes from the sales of software whereas while the remaining 10 percent of its revenues come from installations, support and maintenance services.
Kamal attributes the success of the firm to “our superior products and good services and customer care”. Competition is one thing that does not worry Kamal. He reckons that software houses in Kenya are not as large as Craft Silicon which gives them an advantage in the market.
Our Kenyan competitors are quite small in operation meaning that our biggest competitors are in Europe and India .We face competition from global companies but not in Kenya. Some of our global competitors are very large for instance our nearest competitor is ten times bigger than us. To beat them to a contract, we try to behave like we are big as them by giving better pricing,” he says.
He notes that increased competition in the market will translate to increased employment as has been in India where they employ over 300,000 – 400,000 employees in the software business.
We think competition is fair for the market. When there is competition, all of us will use our expertise to come up with new products and new ways of using the technology. We encourage competition but even with more competition, we’ll still raise the bar. We always want to be on the far front of the technology side” he says.
Kamal reckons that the mobile banking wave that has hit Kenya has created more opportunities for Craft Silicon as every bank works towards integrating customers’ bank services on mobile phones.
We are taking the opportunities presented by mobile and internet banking by innovating new software products .We believe this will further help Craft Silicon grow by increasing our revenues. We take pride in the fact that we were the pioneer company to develop an internet banking software in the Kenyan and other emerging markets,” he says
His future plan for Craft Silicon is to have the company listed either on the London Stock Exchange or the New York Stock Exchange. The reason he is not looking at being listed in Nairobi stock exchange is because he believes the Kenyan market does not appreciate the value of an IT company yet.
If anybody anywhere in the world talks about microfinance and banking software, we should be the number one. Our focus is on the emerging markets, such as Africa and Asia however in coming years we will conquer Latin America and Europe.
Kamal says his plan is to grow Craft silicon into a business like Google or Microsoft.
We want Craft Silicon to become a billion dollar empire in the near future,” he says.
Photo by Dinfin Mulupi
Melva Quillman
October 20, 2011
Great article!