IT Voice) Stellar Data Recovery has had a long and varied history. Can you trace the journey of the company?
Mr. Chandna) Stellar Data Recovery was founded in 1993, by three technocrats Manoj Dhingra, Kuljeet Singh and myself who graduated from University of Pune. It all started as an assignment on data recovery as part of their college project. I later realized the potential in the opportunity and embarked on setting up this company. Manoj & Kuljeet joined me and together we all
set up Stellar Data Recovery. At that time in India, Venture capital funds were rarely available for startups like Stellar so it was self-funded initially and has been a profit making venture since day one of its operations.
IT Voice) What challenges are you facing in driving your data recovery message?
Mr. Chandna) There is little understanding of possibilities of data recovery amongst consumers. Even techies are not aware that after deletion or even formatting their data is recoverable. Those who are aware do not understand how critical it is to choose the right vendor for data recovery purposes. Vendors who do not have the necessary infrastructure can potentially damage chances of successful data recovery. Stellar is the only organization in the entire south east Asia region which has the necessary infrastructure of class 100 Clean room, to successfully recover up to 100% data. Vendor selection therefore is very critical.
IT Voice) Are you planning to expand more regions globally?
Mr. Chandna) Stellar currently operates out of USA, Europe & India. Globally, USA has been our strongest market while UK & Germany have been the other two important markets for us. Our focus is to expand our reach in the entire European region & also to other English speaking markets like Australia; Singapore etc. our products are available in European languages like German, French, and Italian& Spanish to get a deeper penetration in markets where these languages are predominantly spoken.
In India, We have 14 locations. Our 14th location Kochi has been recently launched to attend to the demand in southern India. We will soon be expanding more in the east.
IT Voice) What are you doing differently vis-à-vis competition?
Mr. Chandna) Stellar is perhaps the only company in the world which specializes in offering both data recovery products & services. Stellar offers more than 100 products across data repair, recovery, email migration, password recovery & sanitization categories.
Stellar is the also only organization in the entire South-east Asia region which as a Class 100 clean room for Data Recovery purposes. This is the same environment where hard disks are manufactured.
IT Voice) Tell us about the Indian market for data recovery solutions.
Mr. Chandna) The Indian Market is dominated by unstructured vendors who have limited experience, infrastructure & abilities. Customers often fall prey to such vendors who can potentially worsen the problem and ruin the chances of data recovery.
IT Voice) Due to the global slowdown, the Indian SMBs are focusing more on optimum resource utilization. What are the different product portfolios Stellar Data Recovery can offer to this segment?
Mr. Chandna) Stellar offers a wide range of best-selling utilities in different segments like Disk Recovery tools that include utilities like Windows Data Recovery to recover all kinds of files from storage media like HDD, Memory Cards, Optical drives & USB drives; Photo Recovery to recover Audio, Video & Photos from these media.
File Repair tools to repair corrupt files like word, PowerPoint, SQL databases, Active directory etc. Converter tools – to migrate emails from one platform to another, E-mail Repair tools – to repair entire mailboxes, Password Recovery – retrieve lost or forgotten password and grant access to important data.
