Yirigaa sees its star shine in India

Managed service provider (MSP) Yirigaa will look to launch an office in India as a step forward to both service customers on a 24/7 basis and help create pathways for young First Nations in the technology space.

As an MSP, Yirigaa has core services in recruitment, cyber security, data and general managed services. However, its growth within the last six months has meant it needed to consider and weigh up a bigger move towards requests like 24/7 cyber security support for customers, said CEO Yawun Mundine.

“Recently we realised this [move to India] could actually be a genuine opportunity that’s beneficial for us,” he said. “The first reason is the growth happening here and where we’re headed.

“Many of our partners in Australia were also looking for support overseas and we thought we could be a conduit for them in the Indian market. That was a big factor in the decision.”

The other was the ability to leverage the strong relationship Yirigaa non-executive director Jeff Whitton and its director and CISO Amit Chaubey have with the Bihar International Trade Organisation (BITO).

“Global president of BITO Praveen Kumar is basically a good friend here in Australia,” said Chaubey. “Last year in July, [Jeff] was invited to an event in India and had a first-hand view of how India was growing.

“BITO is a non-for-profit [and we] leveraged the relationship to start an office that can provide some of our cyber security support.”

Through the relationship, Yirigaa was able to validate the feasibility of entering the Indian market, with Kumar also able to help provide an entry-point via BITO’s non-for-profit status and trade-focused mission, Chaubey explained.

“To meet our customer’s expectations for support during out-of-office hours we have to build that model,” he said. “We need to choose a location where it’s user-friendly and time-zone-friendly with people who are willing to work in that model and it has to be cost-effective.

“That’s the most important … you can’t run a business without that.”

Yirigaa founder Mundine told ARN that initially there would be a couple of local staff in India.

“[The] extended team [in India] will report back to the same management, plus our MSP head,” said Chaubey. “When our MSP head is sleeping at 10 o’clock, there’ll be somebody monitoring the customers again.”

An opportunity for Indigenous students

Although Mundine told ARN that Yirigaa initially planned to grow slowly in March, the expected return on investment was a key factor in deciding to move forward with the support office in India. The move also has potential opportunities for students of its Yirigaa Academy programs.

 “Then the next stage will look to bring some of the people from Australia,” said Mundine.

A key goal of the MSP’s plans in India would be to provide Indigenous students and candidates who are part of the Pathways Program an opportunity to work abroad as well, said Whitton.

“When we were given the opportunity to have the office in Delhi, we thought, ‘This gives us a big step to bring our Indigenous candidates out of their own country, where they live in Australia, to different areas,’” he said. “There’s a lot of support from partners to help us do that, which is really good.”

This will be up to the students because leaving the country is an enormous step for them, said both Mundine and Whitton.

“Yawun’s entire vision, mission and objective as to why Yirigaa was started, wasn’t to make money … although money is needed to keep going,” said Whitton. “The objective was to create an organisation where Indigenous people would feel trusted, would trust and would feel safe.

Whitton said while Yirigaa makes sure to provide quality of service to customers, as well as build its certification program with ISO 27001 and become part of initiatives like the Defence Industry Security Program.

“Our real reason for being was to create a business that would attract Indigenous people who have an interest in technology to talk to us so that we could help them achieve that,” he said. “The objective is to achieve outcomes for Indigenous people to get into the industry and jobs.”

Whitton said in his 40 years in the local technology industry and everything he has achieved, Yirigaa has been the highlight.

Mentors for Indigenous children have mostly been elite sportspeople, and there’s nothing wrong with that, if that was what they wanted to do, he noted.

“If they want to try something new, business or technology, or one day be the CEO of their own company, Yawun shows them that they can do it,” Whitton said.

He added that “to watch Yawun speak to students in a classroom about moving from Dubbo to Sydney and how daunting it was” provides Indigenous students with the understanding that they too can achieve that for themselves.

For Mundine, he wants Yirigaa to be known as an Indigenous organisation that provides “quality service delivery” and as a partner “it can stand its “own two legs”.

“We do our own two processes and we achieve our outcomes and goals,” he said. “We have set [Yirigaa] up to with its own ecosystem that’s also self-sustainable.”