Russia’s Envoy in Southeast Asia

CBOSS Corporation completes one of its largest overseas projects. The installation site is the Republic of Indonesia, the world's largest archipelagic state, dispersed around the island of Java. With a population about the same as the USA, Indonesia has less than 20% mobile penetration. Andrey Morozov, President and CEO of CBOSS Corporation, told the Standard magazine about the business, challenges, and successes of CBOSS in Southeast Asia.

– Andrey, according to your official site, CBOSS solutions are operated in seven countries of Southeast Asia, in particular Bangladesh, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Singapore, and Thailand. What percentage of your business comes from this region?

– We are a transnational company, not large but producing one of the world’s best convergent solutions for telecommunications companies. We work everywhere, where there is a market. For CBOSS, Southeast Asia is an important region, as it has the market. Asia is a geographically close region. As a rule, Southeast Asian countries are densely populated. The total population of the region is really huge. Moreover, it is constantly growing alongside rapid increase in mobile penetration. Southeast Asia was one of the first non-CIS regions we started working in. Today, the Southeast Asian share in the CBOSS business is approaching 15%.

– How would you characterize the negotiations with the business of this region?

– It is not fast and it requires a different mentality. Not Russian. To my mind, the difference from the European mentality is in less pragmatism and more harmony. It seems funny to say so now. Actually, I have never paid heed to such notions as mentality, culture, mindset, etc. I am a mathematician by education and thus used to consider these words as empty, having no physical meaning. But it turned out to be wrong. I believed that people were just people, no matter what their skin color, eye shape, or origin. They were like computers, machines processing the information. However, suddenly it dawned on me that such a notion as culture is intervening in our field of activity, in business.

– What did you do to adapt to these conditions?

– When we started working in Southeast Asia, we very soon realized that our mentality should be adapted to the specifics of the region. This cannot be achieved in full. However, it is necessary to do everything possible to align our behavior and work style with their culture and mentality. Probably the most difficult thing for me was to slow down. Not to make hasty decisions. One will not achieve anything there on the fly. It resembles the funny story about the old and the young bull. So, the mentality of a European resembles that of the young bull, while the mindset of a person from Southeast Asia is more mature. After all, Buddhism is an older religion. I had to make an insight into the fundamentals of Buddhism. So, working there requires patient, sequential, and methodical approach. Yes, contract preparation there takes longer than in Europe. On the other hand, they take more solid and profound approach to business.

– As far as I know, numerous Southeast Asian states have military regimes…

– Probably. So what? As a matter of fact, for business it does not matter much who your customer is, if the customer is really interested in your product. The military is okay – even good. CBOSS also has military origins. So this is a certain advantage, again from the point of view of mentality. The military means order. And the order is order, it is more convenient. Moreover, there is such a notion as “military intelligentsia”. They also have this sort of people. By the way, many South Asian militaries studied in Russia.

– I remember about three years ago, CBOSS invited journalists to meet Lao militaries. According to your site, CBOSS has made the greatest progress there.

– Yes, we started communicating with Lao colleagues earlier than others. Correspondingly, now we have more contracts and installations of different solutions there. In Laos, the General Director of one of our customers has started speaking Russian again. By the time we started communicating, he had almost forgotten it and we talked in English. With us, he has remembered Russian. As we were told there, CBOSS has broken an 11-year silence in Russian-Lao relations.

– Great! In the USSR you would have been called an envoy of peace! CBOSS is a peace envoy, isn’t it?

– Oh, yes! An envoy of the fatherland. We were told where to get off here, now we are there.

– Now, seriously. Back to the latest events. You promised to tell about a big new contract in Indonesia. What solution is this and who is a customer?

– In Indonesia, there are dozens of operators including 10 telecoms providing cellular services. Now we are working with only one of them. This is a highly promising start-up. They have just completed a trial of our system and are about to put it into commercial operation. Under the contract signed at the end of last year, we should deliver an end-to-end convergent IT solution providing support for subscriber bases much larger that 10 mln customers. There are two network solution suppliers: a well-known network infrastructure manufacturer and CBOSS. We provide all the components of the IT infrastructure.

– Is the Indonesian solution unique?

– This solution continues the installations of our convergent integrated solutions and resembles those deployed in Azerbaijan for Nar Mobile, and in Nepal. However, the Indonesian installation is the largest for CBOSS. It includes convergent postpaid and prepaid billing, value added services, business intelligence and many other components up to the 3G broadband mobile Internet support.

– In other words, convergent solutions have found their application in the emerging markets, haven't they?

– Yes, that is what is going on. I always talked about it and some thought me insane. At that time, they surely considered it impossible. All they could do is to get single components they deemed the best from everyone and then connect them with wires. Well, yes, not so long ago, an end-to-end IT infrastructure in an integrated solution from a single vendor seemed as fantastic as a car with a pre-integrated radio cassette player. It was always necessary to additionally buy a player from a well-known manufacturer. Today, it is next to impossible to buy a car without an inbuilt audio system that must be professionally integrated taking into account such factors as acoustic pressure, interference, etc.

– So, why buy solutions from CBOSS?

– Well, on the one hand, Asian businessmen are pragmatic. To our mind, the convergent CBOSS solution has the best price-quality ratio in the world: great value, maximum reliability, and superb scalability at a very reasonable price. On the other hand, in spite of a traditional technological focus on the USA, India, and China and negative backdrop on the Western TV channels, Southeast Asia’s attitude to Russia is friendly.

– Nevertheless, half of the contracts presented on the CBOSS site are fully confidential, even on the level of customer names. Is business in Southеast Asia that closed and non-transparent?

– All commercial structures are more or less closed. Public companies are especially non-transparent and telecoms are not an exception. This has nothing to do with mentality. The Canadian operator Rogers appeared on our site only this year, while we have already been cooperating for about six years. Even now only 10% of the work can be made publicly available. I cannot say anything definite about openness of Eastern people and companies. But I don’t think that business in the East is more closed than in the West.

– I know that not many Russian companies dare to go to that market yet. However, the Russians and Russian businesses are present in Southeast Asia. To say the truth, up to now I have heard of a very small Russian business there. But the Russian diaspora emerges on all continents today, especially in most active business zones, which is great. The Russian society is very young and developing. On the one hand, this causes many disadvantages, but, on the other, this encourages active penetration to the new markets. I would recommend our businesses to be even more active, cooperate with each other, and have no fear.