Kochi: UK-based Ignitho Technologies plans to widen its presence in Infopark to service its client additions and would boost its investments here, its CEO told Onmanorama.
Ignitho co-founder and Keralite Jijo Olassa, whose roots are in Changanassery, said the digital solutions company would increase its staff strength here to 100-150 in three to six months to exploit the immense talent pool in the booming port city in the southern Indian state.
"By June-July, the new office will be ready. We have already started the recruitment process," he told Onmanorama in an interview.
Ignitho christened its 2015 plan as 10/10/3.
Interaction with Ignitho CEO Jijo Olassa
The 10/10/3 plan
"The plan, conceived in 2015, is to have 10 successful product companies by 2025, that is 10 years from then, and take three out of that to IPO. That is the 10/10/3 plan," he said.
Ignitho plans to incubate the product companies in Kochi and these will be standalone firms.
The initial focus of Ignitho in Kochi will be on services, he said, adding the hiring part and all will not be investments but project-based, as in client-funded.
"The 100-150 staff will not be hired at one go. Due to existing contracts, the current strength we need will be nearly 80," he said.
Listen to the detailed interaction with Jijo here:
Ignitho's plan is to hire an office space that can accommodate 150 and slowly scale up depending on projects.
Olassa founded Ignitho in 2013 along with Rooney Soloman, whose roots are in Gujarat but settled in Pune.
Olassa started his career with Mindtree's India sales team and then moved on to set up its Middle East business.
Mindtree, where he met Soloman, gave him the mandate to set up its travel retail and media business in the United Kingdom and Europe, based in London, till he quit.
"For a company based in Kochi without having a presence in Western markets in a B2B scenario, you can't survive without a connect," Olassa said.
Hence, Ignitho's UK presence was in sync with plans to set up base in Kochi. Ignitho's USP is the "ability to bring former CIOs to be peers to work with you," he said.
Ignitho is looking at two platforms – accelerator and labs.
"Through accelerator, we will connect western enterprises with startups and via the labs, we will co-ideate and co-innovate," he explained.
Ignitho is also mulling a joint venture with a UK firm, Crimson, which is an IT recruitment company, with a consultant base of 2,000-3,000 across the UK and Europe.
"Crimson is viewing our Kochi operations as the off-shore platform for them. The idea is to recruit on-site team members for on-site contracts and replicate the same model for off-shore," Olassa said.