Mass High Tech
By Dyke Hendrickson

Dr. E-mail is not a doctor. And he doesn't play one on TV.

Dr. E-Mail, aka V.A. Shiva, is a technologist, and that seems to be the reason his company, EchoMail, is surviving today in the CRM (customer relationship management) space.

His product actually works.

One of the most wrong-headed strategies of our bygone Dot-com Era was the notion that fledgling companies had to obtain dominant market share immediately.

The result was that many e-companies went charging into the marketplace with incomplete applications that did not satisfy the customer.

The CRM field was one of the most notorious offenders. Numerous companies, including e-Gain and Kana Communications (which bought Silknet Software in Manchester for $3 billion) ramped up rapidly. They boasted that they would "own" the potentially lucrative b-to-b e-mailing world.

Many such enterprises are struggling today. Indeed, some are currently losing what they once had as customers cancel and revenues plummet.

One company that did not buy into the eat-drink-and-be-merry approach (lionized at Harvard Business School) was EchoMail, a Cambridge technology company that started as Millenium Cybernetics.

The company developed slowly because its founders were determined to produce quality technology.

EchoMail is still alive today.

And it is thriving.

In an era in which once-hot companies are getting the cold shoulder from investors and clients, this CRM specialist is advancing as a market leader.

"We didn't grow quickly because we couldn't," said Shiva, co-founder and chief executive officer. (In a nod to the promotions department, he is marketed as Dr. E-Mail.)

"We were intent on developing our technology, so we worked on the product, not the marketing campaign.

"Other companies in our space got a lot of publicity and several had IPOs. But they didn't develop the platform that would be necessary to really serve the client."

EchoMail, founded in 1994, employs about 120. It is hiring as we speak.

And it has several dozen bill-paying clients, including Time, AT&T, K-Mart, American Express and the U.S. Senate. Company officials predict that sales for 2002 will be about $40 million.

It is profitable.

EchoMail deals with e-mail, either by selling shrink-wrapped software or offering its technology on an ASP basis.

It can launch an e-mail campaign for a client. Or it can handle responses, such as automatically sifting through thousands of queries that K-Mart might get after it launches a nationwide sales offer.

The success of EchoMail can be traced to strong technology. The product was developed, tested and improved. Only then was it taken to market.

Shiva, 37, a New Jersey native who holds several degrees from MIT, is benefiting from patience. And good fortune.

The story goes that in the early '90s, Shiva entered a technology competition held by the White House.

Staffers there were overloaded with e-mail. The White House would receive up to 500 missives per day, and would have interns handle each query personally.

Then the interns replied by snail mail.

Shiva's application responded to e-mails without human intervention. He won the competition, and shortly thereafter began work on developing e-mail campaigns for large enterprises.

"I am a technologist first," said Shiva. "In the mid-'90s, we were developing the technology, but knew we had to keep working on the details before it would be successful.

"It's like flight. The earliest inventors didn't think about the safety features of the aircraft's seats. They thought about getting the plane in the air. And then keeping it there for a longer time.

"We were deliberate about our product. Now, it works, and has many features. Our competitors just don't have all the pieces like we do."

EchoMail appears to be on a roll. The company recently opened R-and-D offices in India, and launched partnering programs in Italy.

The company hired six vice presidents to supervise its growing sales operations. Imagine, a company just getting around to developing its sales team.

"We really haven't had a professional sales staff in place," said the good doctor. “Now that we've got some top people to supervise sales, I think we're ready to really start growing."

Dyke Hendrickson is editor of Mass High Tech.