h-Senid truly Sri Lankan

h-Senid, a fully Sri Lankan software company launched ten years ago has now become a global company. The CEO of h-Senid Dinesh Saparamadu prefers to describe his company as truly Sri Lankan or an indigenous local company.

We started from very humble beginning and h-Senid started with three employees. Today it is a global company with five branches in USA, Singapore, India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. We provide our solutions in North America, South America, Asia, Middle East and Africa. Today we have 200 employees in the company, Saparamadu said.

h-Senid specialised in two sectors human resource (HR) applications and mobile applications. The two sectors are running as separate businesses. In HR applications it provides a 70% market share or 70% of installed HR systems in Sri Lanka. In mobile applications, 80-90% of its products are for the export market.

Saparamadu recalled the beginning of h-Senid. I did my BSc and MSc in IT at Bridgport University in the United States and also worked for several years in the US in the IT field. After I returned from the US in 1996-97 I wanted to start a software development company.

I foresaw the opportunities in the local market. We were lucky and we got several top companies as clients at the very beginning and that changed our destiny. First the multinational Shell Company wanted to develop an HR solution. We next developed HR solutions for Sri Lanka Telecom and SriLankan Airlines. We did world class solutions for them and that led to our success. Today we dominate the market in Sri Lanka.

Strategic partner

Recently h-Senid teamed up with Empower, an Irish company as its strategic partner in Europe to market its HR applications to the European market. In the HR front h-Senid has gone beyond the IT solution providers role. h-Senid recently developed an assessment centre for a Singapore company. The concept is to assess people before they are recruited.

The process included software, multimedia and expertise in HR management. This system enables companies to recruit the most suitable people, specially for top managerial posts, he said.

h-Senid is now expanding its business into new areas. Saparamadu said that it is now ready to provide out-sourcing and host HR solutions.

In mobile applications h-Senid has many success stories. We provide all core applications, such as SMS roaming, USSD roaming and loyalty and reward system for the Mobile One (M-1), the second largest mobile operator in Singapore.

RewardPlus developed by h-Senid was the first loyalty and promotion system of the M1. In February h-Senid developed a loyalty system for M1's prepaid customers using opensource database MySQL in combination with Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system. It was a cost reduction approach.

h-Senid's RewardsPlus enabled M1 to build competitive advantage while generating revenues and building customer loyalty.

Saparamadu said that h-Senid provides the solution for industry giants such as DST Brunei through Lucent Brunei, Todo 1 USA through Valista, Santander Mexico and Kuwait and Middle East Financial Investment Company (KMEFIC), Kuwait.

Our RewardPlus middleware provides a compelling way to attract new prepaid users. DST Brunei set up a wide variety of promotion, loyalty and tenure programs and reward to their subscribers based on usage, event and duration patterns. Success of Todo 1 was in the h-Senid's SMS banking application called Banco.

SMS banking is a secure mobile application that enables subscribers to access their banking details and perform financial transactions through their mobile phones. Banco enables subscribers to perform their usual bank account operations from anywhere and at any time.

The transactions include account balance inquiries, account statement request and fund transfers. Banco is currently connected to multiple banks from multiple countries and with multiple telcos to provide SMS banking services. The same mobile banking solution was implemented at Santander Bank Mexico.

StockTrader, the stock trading solution of h-Senid is now used by KMEFIC in Kuwait in stock trading. The system provides the facility to perform stock related functions using J2ME supported mobile phones. KMEFIC customers can use their mobile phones to get stock information, trade their shares, manage the orders placed and view portfolios.