COO Krishna Kumar spoke to InnovAsia analyst Kavitha Hariharan about how the company approached its first year abroad.

Most Indian software companies find overseas markets and set up their first foreign offices in the United States or Europe. Bangalore-based Unified Technologies (Tech Unified) followed a comparatively less-travelled road to the Middle East.

The company's first Middle Eastern customer led the company to the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh. The assignment, a software-development project for a Saudi Arabian government body, required the company to set up a full-time presence in the city.

"The opportunity came up completely by chance," says Mr Kumar. "We couldn't find much of a market for our products in India, and were looking at other options when a contact referred us to this project."

Tech Unified decided to take up the assignment and open its first overseas office. Since its priorities were to manage this assignment and further sales, Tech Unified sent one of its four founders to set up and manage the new foreign office.

The company chose this key executive for his business development skills, as well as strong technical background - he held an engineering degree from an Indian Institute of Technology.

Through his network, the executive identified a local information technology company with which Tech Unified could form a partnership to meet Saudi Arabian regulations. The partner provided Tech Unified with crucial early support through its knowledge of the local market and cultural environment, as well as its connections to government bodies.

Mr Kumar and his key executive in Riyadh soon realised that it could not survive on government projects alone.

"Governments have long payment cycles," says Mr Kumar, "which might be fine with bigger companies, but was unsustainable for us. We soon realised that we needed corporate clients."

In Mr Kumar's view, many pitfalls can be avoided by co-ordinating domestic and international operations well, tapping the right partners and network for local knowledge and adapting quickly to the local environment.