How we got transformed from a software product company to a web services company was described in the part 2 of this series. That transformation however was merely technological. It brought about its own set of marketing challenges, of which the first was market positioning. It took us quite a few brainstorming sessions and sales pitches before we finally decided to position iBranch.in as ‘Intra College Portal Service’. This straightforward positioning proved the most effective as compared to generic and industry accepted terms like ‘Web Enterprise Portal’ etc. It also helped us in creating our own niche.

After the positioning got stabilized, the next task we had to take up was indeed herculean – motivating the teachers & Students to *Adopt* iBranch for their day-to-day intra college collaboration. By early 2008 we had managed to convince 8 colleges in Bhopal to subscribe to our service. It was obvious that the usage of our service in these colleges would define the future of iBranch.in. We virtually stopped doing new sales and focused on making iBranch successful in those 8 colleges (financially it was a very tough decision). Thus emerged our most important business process called ‘Evangelizing’, which was all about hand-holding and motivating an organization to become mature in doing online collaboration (it still is one of the most important processes in our company). We even designed our own collaboration maturity model for educational institutes so that the level of success of iBranch in an institute can actually be measured. (I really hope to see our maturity model grow into an industry accepted standard someday!)

Well… at the back end we continued to grapple with technology issues. Although by God’s sheer grace our web-app and the server worked like a dream, still we had to negotiate a lot with the power and broadband issues. The funniest of all problems was our “cost effective” UPS, which at the time of power cuts, used to become so hot that you can iron your shirt with it :D It finally burned our cash as we had to buy a good APC ups. (In mid 2009 we decided to outsource the server management part and hired a cloud server from Netmagic solutions.)

Although 2008 didn’t pay us good money, it paid off well in terms of confidence and recognition. Our clients became active users (one of the colleges became hyperactive!). We climbed to the top position in all search engines for our category ‘intra college portal’. And in higher education circles of Bhopal, iBranch became a brand. 2009 has been even better! We’ve expanded the base to reach upto 20,000 college students across 50+ colleges. Our company got selected for the TiE Mumbai’s Entrepreneur Nurturing Program for long-term mentoring, and we are now planning our next major upgrade & expansion in early 2010.

So that was the story of iBranch.in... Thank you for reading... I enjoyed writing :)