iMahal Interview Series:
Rahul Roy
August 22, 2002
iMahal:
We are not familiar with your new software and why it is so popular. Could
you tell us about it?
Roy:
Sure. What happened is, our application PlanWell became an industry default
application for managing and searching documents, especially in the
construction industry. I had taken a top position in ARC. Along came Goldman
Sachs who invested $400 million in the company so that we could acquire more
companies. Today we have acquired 50 operating divisions in 180 locations
with 3000 employees. Our current revenues are running over $500 million.
This year we want to go to IPO. Last week we had Wall Street Journal
reporters here interviewing us.
We also had some temporary trouble with the FTC, who claimed that we were
creating a monopoly in the reprographics industry. We said to them, "Well
what about Home Depot and Wal-Mart? They enter a market and take over, but
so far the consumer benefits. And we aren't doing anything as dominating as
their expansions. We offer services that are lower price and higher quality,
so why are you going after us?" So the FTC is backing down after our
attorneys made a strong case.
So we are waiting for the Dow and NASDAQ to reach higher levels and then we
will go IPO this year. Goldman Sachs is confident about an IPO. We are not
some fake dot-com company. We have had real revenues and real profits for
the past 4 years. We may pursue the Fedex IPO model: sell some, hold some
back, sell some, hold some back.
Our application is poised to do very well. It is growing into a complete ERP
application. We have incorporated bidding into it. And it distributes
drawings electronically in all formats. It actually gets rid of the need for
a lot of printing. We expect it to revolutionize the construction industry.
All those construction sites have those trailers, and in those trailers are
racks of drawings. Our software will replace those racks with computers.
Already this industry is a big user of our PlanWell application.
There are more than 2 million users of PlanWell at this time. It is a big
success.