YOU can’t blame M Sanjay Kanth for not being ambitious.
The founder of Bangalore-based ESS Solutions aims to make his company the Google
of land titles. ESS serves the multi-billion dollar US title industry. It offers
services right from processing a loan to funding of loans, including legal work.
It also provides property searches with last deed of record and chain of title with
a complete report on judgements, litigations, bankruptcy and other documents. This
search is essential for the client to have his property insured against any uncertainties
that may arise. Companies investing in property in buy ESS’ services to ensure that
there is no other claimants or legal dispute surrounding the property.
All this is done by ESS team of searchers in its Bangalore
office who look up online databases and records and collect the information about
the property. Once this is done, the report is sent to the lender for approval.
Upon approval the borrower’s signature is obtained on the closing documents and
then it is submitted to the lenders once again. After this, the funds are transferred
from the lender into the escrow account of the title company. Title company handles
all the disbursement. “Error-free transactions, quick turnaround time and cost are
the competitive levers,” says the Mr Kanth.
Large players like FirstAmerican Title Insurance, Fidelity
Title Insurance have also set up their own captive centres in India. Even banks
like HSBC, Citi have started processing some of their uninsured work from their
centres in India. But ESS claims to be the first company to offer complete services
right from an order request to disbursement and recording of the financial instruments.
ESS is Mr Kanth’s second venture. Mr Kanth went to the
US for his Masters in Public Health after completing his medical degree (MBBS) and
subsequently went on to medical residency in New York. During this period, the medical
transcription industry was on an upswing and lot of offshoring was taking place.
Through his medical contacts he got contracts from doctors in the US to use the
services, that’s where the offshoring company was born. He started the title business
in January 2003 with a home-based office in New York and an existing operational
centre in Bangalore, doing sales calls to all the potential clients in health care
and title insurance field.
But over time the medical transcription opportunity disappeared
because most of the hospitals and big clinics in US have implemented voice transcription
software. Just when Mr Kanth was wondering about the next steps, he met the president
of a title company based out of Baltimore in 2003-2004. He told Mr Kanth that there
was a refinance boom in the US which resulted in a huge backlog in terms of production.
Incidentally, his brother M Sujay Kanth, who is now the COO of ESS, happened to
be in the US to explore business opportunities. They took up this opportunity. This
was their first break. They met with the title official and looked at the process.
“Initially, we had no clue of what was going on and it was very hard to grasp. We
took it as a challenge and Sujay got trained in their office for about 40 days after
which we started the transition to my India office from 2004,” the doc said.
Now, ESS has its own title insurance company in the US
so it is basically involved in the entire process. But, as far as the India operations
are concerned, it is handling most of the tasks other than disbursement.
The clients are primarily insurance companies, a few lenders
also use the services — a 70:30 split. The five top players in the US title industry
are Fidelity National Financial, First American Title Insurance, LandAmerica Title
Insurance, Stewart Title Guaranty and Old Republic Title Insurance. Most of the
above-mentioned companies are in Fortune 500 league. ESS does business with two
of the companies and are in a partnership with Stewart Title.
ESS did not go out for raising capital as it funds all
infrastructure development through internal accrual. “We have had many US insurance
companies interested in investing in our company, which included a couple of Fortune
500 firms, but, we did not feel the necessity to liquidate our stakes at this point
of time. Going forward we would like to get listed in India,” says the doctor.
The company plans to add 600-650 jobs over the next couple
of years in India. It also plans to start similar ventures in the UK. ESS has two
offices in US, one in London and two in India. As a group, the net revenues per
quarter is around $0.8 million (Rs 3.2 crore).
Scaling up the venture from this point onwards is not
going to be easy with the overheated real estate and manpower market in India. Mr
Kanth says, “It’s been a very satisfying journey but, with its highs and lows. High
attrition has been a constant challenge and even more challenging is to keep my
clients happy. I am going to become a father soon and I think the birth and growth
of ESS has prepared me for fatherhood.”
By Mahul Brahma