Regional Focus: Turkey

Interview with Dilip Singh, CEO at Telenity by Telekom Dunyasi
November, 2007

Dilip Singh President and CEO	Serif Beykoz General Manager, Telenity Europe

TELEKOM DUNYASI: Can you give us a brief overview of Telenity?

SINGH: Telenity is a leading provider of next generation converged services platforms and applications for communications networks. Telenity's IMS ready converged services solutions include: reusable service delivery and content components enabling rapid service creation, deployment and execution functionalities across multiple services and applications; location gateways; integrated messaging solutions; and value added services. Telenity's worldwide customer base includes network operators, service providers and application providers serving over 100 million customers. Telenity partners with global and regional network equipment providers, system integrators and computing platform manufacturers.

TELEKOM DUNYASI: How do you see the potential and future of the software industry in Turkey and in the world?

SINGH: Globally, software sector is a maturing industry. Both the growth and proliferation of Internet are positively affecting the software development industry globally. Successful innovative and consumer oriented Internet communications and social networking companies like Faceboook, Google and Skype fuel the software industry and economy in the countries where they operate.

In Turkey, the software industry is still a young and growing sector, but we believe that it will contribute more and more to the economy and foreign trade in Turkey. We see great potential and growth especially in enterprise (logistics, Human resource management, customer relationship management) and telecommunications software sector.  To realize this potential, we need to continuously improve upon areas such as management of intellectual property rights, education and growth of qualified human resources pool, software project development and management.

TELEKOM DUNYASI: What do you think the size of the software sector will be in ten years? Globally? In Turkey?

SINGH: By end of 2007, we believe that the software sector will reach a market size of $140 billion globally and $720 million in Turkey. When we look at 10 years down the road, in 2017 we speculate that the software sector will continue to grow and reach market size of $200 billion, globally.  In Turkey, we expect even a higher growth rate and we expect the software sector to reach a market size of $2.5 billion at a minimum.

TELEKOM DUNYASI: Telenity is developing and deploying software solutions successfully. Can you evaluate your success in your specific industry?

SINGH: We export our solutions to 22 countries and they serve over 100 million subscribers around the world. Our revenues grow around 30-35% every year. Right now, with a team of 162 employees Telenity alone is covering 20% of Turkey’s software export. We have sold our software solutions to network operators in India, the hearth of software sector. In 2007, we exceeded our 2006 revenues and in 2008, we want to continue our growth at 35-40%.

TELEKOM DUNYASI: There is a large young population in Turkey and they are inclined towards the information and software sector. Do you have any observation on this potential in Turkey? Can you share them with us?

SINGH: First of all, the young population in Turkey is very talented. But to bring this potential and talent out, education is a must. This means, encouragement and investment are needed starting from universities.  As Telenity, we face some difficulty finding qualified and experienced staff in telecommunications sector. Software sector is an extensive industry and has many verticals. For each vertical, qualifications and skills of staff needed are very different. For example, qualifications that a telecom software company looks for in a software engineer are totally different than what a logistics software company would look for in an employee.
In telecommunications, due to factors such as scalability of systems developed, giving 100% service in the field, whether the services deployed have direct impact on the income flow of the network operator or not, different types of software are required and finding the appropriate staff that can develop these types of software takes utmost importance.

TELEKOM DUNYASI: There is an apparent acceleration in the informatics sector in Turkey. What can you sat about the the R&D policies applied by Turkey?

SINGH: R&D enticements in Turkey support the entrepreneurial spirit. Tax advantages offered to companies located in the Technocity and the Free Zone provide a cost advantages especially for companies which export their products and solutions. These types of government subsidies have great affect on the software sector becoming a locomotive industry. Nevertheless, more resources can and should be allocated to the software sector. Right now, less than 1% of the national income is allocate towards software R&D. This allocation needs to rise to 3% and with this, Turkey needs to plan and develop projects in informatics and software areas.

TELEKOM DUNYASI: Finally, Is there anything else you would like to add?

SINGH: We want to see the software sector become one of the “locomotive sectors” that greatly contribute to the growth of the Turkish economy.