Company Profile
Our Story
The TaraSpan Group was co-founded in 2005 by Mike Manson and Raj Narula in Ottawa Canada. At that time, the co-founders realized three powerful dynamics were looming on the horizon for Canadian technology companies:
- Canadian technology companies were heavily invested in the United States market next door, but were completely missing the nascent economic growth occurring half a world away in India.
- The R & D cost advantage enjoyed by Canadian technologies was being eroded due to appreciation of the Canadian versus the US dollar.
- Specific R & D skillsets were becoming difficult to find in the local labour market.
It was obvious that future growth and value creation would be impacted unless Canadian technology companies looked at India as both a market destination and a source of cost-effective engineering talent, neither of which was a historical area of competency for these companies.
In studying this problem, it became evident that technology companies in Canada saw entering India, either as a market or for outsourcing, as something risky, unknown and a little mysterious.
Lastly, Canadian technology companies were arriving late to the party.
It is with this realization that the TaraSpan Group was formed to develop a platform to enable Canadian technology companies to rapidly enter the Indian market, and to de-risk and de-mystify the process.
Due to our strong background in Indian offshore product development, the company had been acting as advisors to numerous technology companies on offshore product development strategies.
At the same time, the TaraSpan Group was helping to launch several early startups in technologies as varied as nanotechnology materials for solar energy, optical photonics components, and data management for clinical trial research, to name a few. The Group raised over $40 million in angel funding, seed and A-round VC funding, and innovation funding from government for these companies. It was increasingly obvious that early-stage startups needed to look to the non-traditional market of India as a growth strategy.
In 2006, the TaraSpan began to develop India market entry strategies specifically for early-stage technology companies. Over the course of the next year the company developed a highly effective process for enabling startups to enter the India market something that was heretofore only undertaken by larger companies. Numerous Canadian technology companies have since been introduced to the Indian market by TaraSpan and multiple contracts have been awarded to TaraSpan’s customers from India. As a result, the TaraSpan Group has developed a deep network of CxO relationships with some of the largest Indian companies.
In the 2007, the TaraSpan Group took its India market-entry framework to a whole new level through a vision that included local-market representation, product technical support, dedicated business development efforts in India, and software product development in India for market-specific features and traditional outsourced product development. This vision was also extended to address not only startups but also mid-size and large-size technology companies. In order to realize this vision the company received funding from notable Canadian and European investors, including Wesley Clover one of Canada’s most active and successful technology funds and chaired by Sir Terence Matthews. This funding enabled the TaraSpan Group to set up its subsidiary, Wesley Clover Communication Solutions Pvt Ltd, in Gurgaon India and to acquire a software engineering services company in Pune India.
Along the way, the TaraSpan Group has also acted as advisors for mergers and acquisitions between Canadian and Indian companies.
TaraSpan’s vision of providing a unique platform for rapidly entering the Indian market has been realized. |