November 2003
Flash dreams
A small-time startup is forced to bank on piracy vendors to release its products
by Salman Siddiqui
Among the innumerable reasons that piracy flourishes here is the failure of our representative bodies to support local developers. Local designers, who usually come from middle class backgrounds, develop competitive products but, in the end, sell them for peanuts to vendors. Valencia Technologies is one such example. Valencia Technologies is not a multimedia technologies firm or a company occupying office space. It represents the aspirations of five individuals: Farhan Zafar, Khwaja Mohammad Mohiuddin and Moinuddin, Saifullah and Saif-ur-Rahman. A few months back, they launched their first product called “Bahamdagur Urdu Tutorial Barai Macromedia Flash MX”- an Interactive audio and video Urdu tutorial on Flash MX. Inspired from the English tutorials series started by Lynda Weinman and Garo Green on Macromedia tools called “Learning Flash”, the CD appears to be an Urdu version of the original tutorial. The group maintains that their product is not a mere translation and has the distinction of being one of its kind in interactive Urdu products. It took the team six months to develop the CD and they were eyeing a target of Rs.40,000 for their commendable effort. What followed is an interesting story.Valencia felt they could not delay the release because Macromedia might launch a new version of Flash. They needed a quick sponsor for the marketing and legal distribution of their CD. Not knowing whom they should approach to fund their maiden business venture, they contacted Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman who helped set up a meeting with the Regional Director of the Pakistan Software Export Board. The regional director offered that if they launched their product from a commercial platform, he could guarantee that the CD would be released all over Pakistan. Valencia refused. Why should they merge with anyone else when they had done all the hard work? Disappointed, the director promised to get in touch with them within a few days. No contact was made after that.Next they approached some private companies for sponsorship but turned up no solid offers. Dejected, Valencia tried their luck at Rainbow Center Karachi, the hub of software piracy in Pakistan. Surprisingly, even Rainbow Center offers the opportunity to get your product registered and distributed ‘legally’. In this deal, the client has to submit a registration fee of around 5,000 rupees and is offered anywhere between Rs. 3 to Rs.5 per CD sold. But there’s a catch. How would you know the exact number of your CDs sold in one city let alone throughout Pakistan? One has to rely on the word of the releasing agents. When a client registers his product with an agent, not only does that agent have the sole authority to make copies of the CD but he can also collect fines on other agents if they duplicate the product. The releasing agent, who has many distributors throughout the country, can easily cheat the client by making pirated copies and releasing them in the market. This is what Valencia feared and instead decided to sell their product as unregistered to the highest bidder. The offers made to them ranged from a mere Rs.1000 to Rs.5000. They finally struck a deal with one of the distributors for Rs.15000 and in May 2003 their software was finally out. According to one of their sources at Rainbow, it is estimated that about 25,000 to 30,000 copies of their product have been sold. Valencia’s next project is an interactive tutorial on Dreamweaver MX in Urdu.
Site:
Valencia Technologies
www.valenciatech.com
A small-time startup is forced to bank on piracy vendors to release its products
by Salman Siddiqui
Among the innumerable reasons that piracy flourishes here is the failure of our representative bodies to support local developers. Local designers, who usually come from middle class backgrounds, develop competitive products but, in the end, sell them for peanuts to vendors. Valencia Technologies is one such example. Valencia Technologies is not a multimedia technologies firm or a company occupying office space. It represents the aspirations of five individuals: Farhan Zafar, Khwaja Mohammad Mohiuddin and Moinuddin, Saifullah and Saif-ur-Rahman. A few months back, they launched their first product called “Bahamdagur Urdu Tutorial Barai Macromedia Flash MX”- an Interactive audio and video Urdu tutorial on Flash MX. Inspired from the English tutorials series started by Lynda Weinman and Garo Green on Macromedia tools called “Learning Flash”, the CD appears to be an Urdu version of the original tutorial. The group maintains that their product is not a mere translation and has the distinction of being one of its kind in interactive Urdu products. It took the team six months to develop the CD and they were eyeing a target of Rs.40,000 for their commendable effort. What followed is an interesting story.Valencia felt they could not delay the release because Macromedia might launch a new version of Flash. They needed a quick sponsor for the marketing and legal distribution of their CD. Not knowing whom they should approach to fund their maiden business venture, they contacted Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman who helped set up a meeting with the Regional Director of the Pakistan Software Export Board. The regional director offered that if they launched their product from a commercial platform, he could guarantee that the CD would be released all over Pakistan. Valencia refused. Why should they merge with anyone else when they had done all the hard work? Disappointed, the director promised to get in touch with them within a few days. No contact was made after that.Next they approached some private companies for sponsorship but turned up no solid offers. Dejected, Valencia tried their luck at Rainbow Center Karachi, the hub of software piracy in Pakistan. Surprisingly, even Rainbow Center offers the opportunity to get your product registered and distributed ‘legally’. In this deal, the client has to submit a registration fee of around 5,000 rupees and is offered anywhere between Rs. 3 to Rs.5 per CD sold. But there’s a catch. How would you know the exact number of your CDs sold in one city let alone throughout Pakistan? One has to rely on the word of the releasing agents. When a client registers his product with an agent, not only does that agent have the sole authority to make copies of the CD but he can also collect fines on other agents if they duplicate the product. The releasing agent, who has many distributors throughout the country, can easily cheat the client by making pirated copies and releasing them in the market. This is what Valencia feared and instead decided to sell their product as unregistered to the highest bidder. The offers made to them ranged from a mere Rs.1000 to Rs.5000. They finally struck a deal with one of the distributors for Rs.15000 and in May 2003 their software was finally out. According to one of their sources at Rainbow, it is estimated that about 25,000 to 30,000 copies of their product have been sold. Valencia’s next project is an interactive tutorial on Dreamweaver MX in Urdu.
Site:
Valencia Technologies
www.valenciatech.com
posted by Salman Siddiqui | 8:06 AM
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