On 20th August, the front page of the most
widely read business daily in Japan, Nihon Kezai
Shimbun, printed a story of a company’s
unique business model of providing bi-directional
training and solutions to Japanese companies.
The story talks about a company’s business
model which has been helping Japanese corporate
to do business with India.
This company is Softbridge Solutions, based
in Pune, Singapore & Tokyo. This is proven
to be a successful example of the growing Indo
– Japanese business partnership.
India’ IT exports to Japan is merely
3% as compared to over 60% to USA. Whilst most
of Indian IT companies complained about Japanese
language and culture as a big barrier to enter
the 2nd largest IT market in the world, 2 young
Indians saw this as an immense opportunity to
build their business with Japan.
The bi-directional training is, grooming Indian
engineers in Japanese language & culture
and also training Japanese companies in English,
Cross Culture and IT. This has allowed both
the economies to overcome the business barriers.
This unique business model has resulted in reaching
revenue of USD 2.5 million in its third year
of operations for the company.
Says Prashant Devatraj, founder director of
the company “We realized the potential
of the Japanese IT market 4 years ago and saw
business synergy between India’s IT talent
and requirements of Japan” adds further,
“In the past 2 years we have groomed over
60 software engineers in Japanese language &
Culture presently deployed on-site at various
Japanese IT companies and we have another 35
engineers presently undergoing training in Pune”
“Our innovative India-2-Japan (I2J) and
Japan-2-India (J2I) programs which comprehensively
cover all aspects of technical, local methodology,
language and cultural exchange have been highly
appreciated by our Japanese clients which include
respected companies like Toshiba, Toppan, Hitachi,
Sanyo, Yokogawa and many others” said
Mr. Prashant Devatraj, at the commencement of
the new batch of the I2J program.”
Softbridge has been successful in breaching
the legendary language and cultural barriers
that outsiders face in Japan. All programs are
designed and developed in Japan and delivered
in India by Japanese faculty. “A correct
insight into Japanese work culture, language
and development methodology is the key to our
success” says Ms. Yuki Fukushima, the
Training Manager at Softbridge, who herself
comfortably straddles this divide having worked
in the US as a currency dealer and a trainer
teaching Japanese to Americans. While she appreciates
the enormous differences involved, she is impressed
by the multilingual skills of Indian professionals.
“When most IT companies saw Japanese
language training as an expense, Softbridge
Solutions considered this as an investment”
These initiatives have received enormous media
appreciation in Japan continuously. It has featured
regularly in the Japanese media including TV
Tokyo, Nikkei Business Magazine, Mainichi Shimbun
and Nihon Kezai Shimbun.
Says, Mr. Prashant Jain, the President &
CEO, “Our mission is to be a lead player
in Japanese market and to promote ‘brand
India’ as the most preferred training
and offshoring destination for Japan”
adds further “This will enable Indian
IT industry to look beyond US and European markets
and make foray into the world’ second
largest market”.
