Another announcement made by the company recently was the appointment of Amir Kazmi as the Vice President and Global Head of SaaS and Strategic Initiatives located in London. Manav Garg, CEO and Founder of EKA software solutions commented, “The market feedback from mid-sized companies has been an overwhelming need for proper software to help manage the ups and downs of the commodities business, but without the hassles of IT infrastructure management and high up-front costs. Our technology platform is ideal for providing such an offering on the cloud. With that in mind, we welcome Amir to Eka’s management team. His experience and knowledge of the Energy sector as well as the SaaS business model will assist us in moving into the next stage of this exciting evolution.” The appointment of Kazmi is also consistent with EKA’s objective to deliver its SaaS Eka.energy software to mid-tier oil companies seeking a more physically focused solution, said Mr. Mathur.

The Eka solution has replaced several spreadsheet-based processes used by its traders and risk managers in US, Germany, Italy and France and they are now in a better position, from a sales standpoint, to quote a firm price to a customer for future delivery, and immediately hedge that copper or aluminum commodity to avoid/contain commodity price risk in the price of its cable.  Management has  a consolidated corporate view of its physical and financial commodity position in real-time for the first time as opposed to monthly according to Eka.

The software also includes Eka’s hedge accounting module, so the hedges comply with all the relevant IFRS and FASB accounting rules. Eka believes this is the first time that a CTRM supplier has incorporated a hedge accounting module of its own design.

The white paper can be downloaded from this blog;

Trading Beginnings
Mr. Garg started out his career trading Green Coffee in Singapore helping to set up a Coffee desk for a trading company there. In the process of setting up those trading operations he “saw people talking about systems but found that almost everyone was actually using spreadsheets.” He left his trading job in 2001 and spent some time looking at what needed to be provided as a trading software solution utilizing his contacts in the industry and in 2004 his company, Eka, produced its first software solution for Coffee trading. Eka rapidly extended its software’s functionality across the agricultural commodities area launching a fully fledged product in 2006. As we got deeper into the market, “customers kept asking us about metals systems,” said Mr. Garg and so Eka added some metals specialists as employees and set about delivering a metals solution too. It was also soon made available as a part of the Eka solution.

A Young Company taking Advantage of Technology
Mr. Garg describes Eka as a young company that has been able to take advantage of newer technologies to build out its solution. The company has sought, and gained, external funding which it has invested in operations, training and management. He describes Eka as “very strong on innovation, focused on providing user friendly software that handles the physical side of commodities trading very well.”

The company’s vision is to build out across commodities specializing in physical commodity functionality, including some aspects of energy, he told me. A demonstration of the product soon shows that emphasis on managing the physical transaction is indeed an Eka specialty and certainly a differentiator for the company. Mr. Garg sees his company’s product as strong on physical management and physical P&L but he quickly states that it can also handle paper trading too. “Most companies want to manage the supply chain better and understand the risks on the physical side particularly. That’s where Eka excels,” he says.

The company today employs 210 people the majority of which are based in Bangalore, India, but last year it opened offices in the UK and USA. “We are an international company,” said Mr. Garg, “India is our headquarters but our other offices will have sales, support and delivery staff.”

A Blurring of Commodities
As for energy commodities, Eka will be launching energy coverage in July/September 2010 and are already slating demonstrations for February. “The boundaries between commodities are getting increasingly blurred,” sates Mr. Garg. “People want a multi-commodity platform from a single vendor and common technology. The approach that we have taken is fresh emphasizing implementation success and our understanding of the physical space.”

Indeed, it is this “blurring” of the commodity trading landscape that Mr. Garg sees as helping fuel some of the latest acquisitions in the CTRM space. “Most ETRM solutions came from the paper trading side and those vendors are now seeing that the physical side is more important. Competitors are trying to get into the broader commodities space and so we will see more and more interest in acquisitions from those vendors as a means to doing so.” However, Mr. Garg is of the opinion that it will take 2-3 years for acquiring vendors to truly assimilate what they buy so he isn’t too worried about the short-term impact on Eka’s fortunes meanwhile, he says, Eka will already have crossed over into the energy space.

His vision for Eka in 2-3 years is that it is a mutli-commodity platform with coverage of energy commodities such as oil, biofuels and products, for example. Eka itself may look at an acquisition, for instance, in natural gas. In addition, the company is also set to launch an innovative hedge accounting product to its portfolio shortly. Finally, Eka is adding more people to help with sales and its focus on implementation.

Summary
From appearing on our radar screen around a year ago, Eka have certainly started to emerge as a major player in agriculture and metals commodities. Its recent announcement of a new license deal with Traxys also mentions that energy commodities are included. With its lower cost base in India for development and its use of modern technologies and architectures it does seem that Eka can move rapidly into other commodities. It’s emphasis on managing the physical side of commodities is also a differentiator that, in part, is helping the company to win new clients.

Can Eka maintain its momentum? Only time will tell.

About Manav Garv

Mr. Manav Garv

Manav founded Eka after a brief stint as a trader with a large global commodity trading house. It was during his trading days that he saw the deficiencies in traditional trading and risk management software. Realizing the market opportunity, and combining this with his passion for technology, Manav setup Eka with venture capital funding.

The first few years of organizational building at Eka were an invaluable experience, helping him gain deep and unique insights into all aspects of the business, and the needs of customers across the globe. Today, with Eka having shown significant growth in revenues, profitability, customer base and employees, Manav provides leadership and overall direction in such strategic areas as talent management, product direction and growth strategy. He constantly strives to achieve ever higher levels of organizational excellence and customer satisfaction by encouraging responsibility and accountability at all levels.

Born in 1974, Manav graduated as an engineer from REC (Regional Engineering College) Jalandhar, and followed this by an MBA from IIFT (Indian Institute of Foreign Trade), Delhi. Manav is a member of the CII National Committee on IT, ITeS & e-Commerce for the year 2009-10 and is part of the sub-committee on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Agriculture.

New Offices
EKA opened its own offices in both the US in Connecticut and the UK in London in 2009 expanding its local presence into two important markets for CTRM software.

New Customers
The company had a solid year winning a number of new license deals including AWB and Medsofts in the softs and grains market and Traxys, Garmco, Oman Cables and Superior Essex in the metals and mining space.

New Staff
During 2009, EKA added some significant new talent to its senior team including Rick Nelson as Head of Sales (formerly VP Sales at ICE and Triple Point), Dan McEvoy as head of the metals and mining practice (formerly President Brady US) and Amit Surekha as CFO (formerly CFO & Director with Mphasis). It also added staff in the sales and marketing and consulting and implementation areas.

New Funding
The company obtained $10million in new capital from Nexus Venture Partners – a $320million fund – to enhance its technical, support and sales capabilities and help capitalize on current opportunities to accelerate growth.

New Product Platform
EKA released its new product platform in 2009. It includes significantly enhanced risk analysis and reporting functionality, new dashboards, drag and drop reporting and business intelligence as well as significant additions in the areas of goods accounting, inventory valuations, logistics planning and execution for example. It also introduced a fully integrated concentrates, ferro alloys and base metals CTRM solution.

Industry Recognition
The company was also recognized by a number of outside parties including being ranked among the top 10 in the Deloitte India Technology Fast 50, ranked number 1 in the Nasscom Emerge 50 and ranked in the top 10 of the Silicon Valley India list.

EKA also emerged in CommodityPoint’s Vendor Perception Study (conducted annually) were it had brand recognition and was recognised as a leading agricultural commodities CTRM vendor by the respondents.

We anticipate seeing a lot more of EKA in 2010.