AGS Transact Technologies (AGSTT), the brainchild of Ravi Goyal, is the leading provider of touch point technology solutions to the banking industry. It derives 70 percent of its turnover from the supply and maintenance of ATMs for banks. The remaining 30 percent is generated by providing similar dispensing technology solutions to the petroleum, retail and paints industries.
It operates on an outsourced transaction-based model where the machines are built and maintained by the company instead of the bank. Or, simply put, AGSTT takes care of leasing, building and managing the cash lifecycle of the ATMs, and charges the bank based on the transactions that take place on the machines.
AGSTT began by providing colour-matching solutions to the textile industry. It expanded the same concept to paints where manufacturers use dispensing machines at the retail level to mix and match colours for their final customers. For the retail industry, it provides point-of-sale hardware as well as software products which offer billing and check-out solutions to major players like the Tatas, the Aditya Birla Group and Reliance Industries. For petroleum stations, AGSTT’s products handle wet stock management which includes payments by customers.
The Man Behind It
Chairman and Managing Director Ravi Goyal joined DCM Computers in 1983 as a service engineer. In 1992, he decided to start his own company, Advanced Graphic System (AGS), to market textile designing software for Computer Design, a US-based company. By 1999, he was clear that he wanted to operate in a niche sector where competition is limited. He zeroed in on colour-matching systems based on computer applications for the paints industry. In 2002, he started AGSTT, separate from the existing AGS that continues to be owned by Goyal.
He had figured that industries like automobile paints and decorative paints were looking for solutions in the colour dispensing space. And, over a period of time, Goyal got a strong hold on various dispensing technologies, including that for the textile industry.
He then became curious about cash dispensing technology. He felt there was a future there and started to search for opportunities. Goyal’s problem, though, was that he did not have a background in banking. And that industry was going to be his key customer. Also, banks look for vendors who understand hardcore technology and AGSTT was more into the solutions side of the business. In 2004-05, Goyal finally got a foothold in the space. He tied up with Wincor Nixdorf, the third largest ATM provider in the world and gradually started with the small staging and assembling of the machines.
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(This story appears in the 06 September, 2013 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
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