Chennai based thin client manufacturer Novatium Solutions Private Ltd, which counts New Enterprise Associates and Ericsson as investors, has inducted former Tata Sky executive vice-president Anurag Agrawal as its India CEO. (Thin clients are slim versions of PCs that require to be connected to a server to operate. They depend on SaaS applications, and are not as powerful as desktop PCs.)
Alok Singh, the global CEO and MD of Novatium, said, “Anurag with his strong leadership skills and rich sales and marketing experience is the perfect choice to lead Novatium as it enters a phase of rapid growth in a dynamic market such as India.”
Singh is also on the board of directors along with Ray Stata, Chairman of Analog Devices Inc, Rajesh Jain, MD of Netcore Solutions and Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala, founder of the TeNet Group that incubated Novatium. Recently, Ericsson invested in a strategic minority stake in Novatium while New Enterprise Associates is also an investor in the firm.
“Novatium’s cutting edge products and superior technology have made it a runaway success. I am delighted with the opportunity to lead Novatium in this exciting and dynamic new age business and look forward to working with the team,” said Agrawal.
As Tata Sky executive VP (sales & service), Agrawal headed sales, service and customer lifecycle management for North and East India and rolled out its retail chain of over 1500 stores. Prior to this, he headed broadband operations planning for Reliance Infocomm (now RCOM), and was employed at ICICI Bank, Spice Communications and Hutch Essar. He is an IIM Lucknow alumnus.
The IIT Chennai incubated company was set up in 2004 with the goal of offering a unique PC with a subscription based plan. Priced at an affordable $100 (Rs 4200), the Nova NetPC was targeted at educational institutions and was aimed at the PC segment and not low cost computing.
It bundles the netPC with broadband from Airtel, MTNL, BSNL, Tata Teleservices, TTML and Mauritius Telecom. The MTNL Nova Navigator offer begins at Rs 4999 and includes USB keyboard, USB mouse and Nova Navigator Console. In addition, the Nova Computing monthly cost is Rs. 249, which is not inclusive of broadband. Other products in its portfolio include the new version of Navigator or netPC - the Navigator+, netbook Nova Neon and Nova cNergy, a USB bootable Pen Drive to access its Nova Computing Service.
Its customer portal nGene, besides allowing users to manage and recharge their accounts, offers subscription to content and applications including NIIT Training on Computing, BigLaksh's online maths tutorial package which has prerecorded interactive videos of the entire CBSE class X Maths, online accounting solution Saral-Al, online web applications suite ZOHO, games from FX Labs. It also offers a choice between Microsoft Office applications and OpenOffice.