Your Tech Story

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Zendesk

Zendesk, Founded By Three Friends that Revolution Customer Support Experience.

Zendesk ignited a revolution in the customer experience arena. The company Zendesk facilitates billions of interactions, bringing together more than 100,000 businesses and millions of customers via phone, chatting, mail, texting, social media, communities, review websites, and help desks. Zendesk improves customer support by creating software to fulfill customers’ requirements, empower teams, and maintain company synchronization.

About The Company

Zendesk is an American company offering software-as-a-service items for customer communications, sales, and customer support. The company has its main office in San Francisco, CA. In 2007, the business was established in Copenhagen, Denmark. Before the public offering in 2014, It raised around $86 million in funding from venture capitalists.

Zendesk
Image source: pinimg.com

History

Morten Primdahl, Alexander Aghassipour, and Mikkel Svane, three friends, founded Zendesk in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2007. The co-founders of Zendesk initially contributed to the company funding while working as consultants. In 2007, the SaaS product had roughly 1,000 trial users within a few months of its release. At first, the software’s popularity grew gradually through word-of-mouth referrals primarily among several other startups. Due to a greater interest in handling complaints from customers on social networks and when Twitter began utilizing, its popularity skyrocketed in 2008. Venture capitalists were only ready to fund Zendesk if the firm relocated to the USA where the majority of their clients were located. Zendesk relocated to Boston, Massachusetts, in 2009. They relocated again around six months later, to San Francisco, CA. As Zendesk expanded globally, offices were opened in Australia, Ireland, Denmark, and Singapore. In 2012, It launched its first app store for third-party Zendesk software. Zendesk filed for an IPO in 2014 and had a $1.7 billion valuation. The software from Zendesk was first designed to help small firms, but over time it evolved to help bigger businesses. Additionally, It changed its emphasis from responding to inbound customer inquiries to proactive customer communication based on online comments. Zendesk relaunched in 2016 with a new logo that emphasized proactive customer communication. In 2016, it launched features that convert online testimonials and comments into customer support tickets, and in 2017, it bought Outbound.io, a service that aids companies in responding to online complaints. In 2018, It generated $500 million in revenue annually. In 2019 Zendesk acquired Smooch, a Montreal-based company that provided live customer assistance messaging. In 2020, the company announced additional customer support tools for web-based media. In 2022, it was revealed that a group of private equity investors fronted by Permira and Hellman & Friedman will acquire it for $10.2 billion.

Business

Zendesk Support allows you to have an efficient and effective work process by bringing all of your client relationships together in one location. No matter how a client contacts you—via email, social media like Facebook, social messaging services like WhatsApp, Twitter, WeChat, Direct, etc.—the experience will be the same. Additionally, It offers a cloud-based chatbot that is designed to grow with a company or group’s demands. The product works well for both major companies and various fair-sized businesses. Zendesk Chat is already being used by many companies since it enables them to communicate with customers directly. Etsy, Dropbox, Kickstart, and League of Legends are just a few of Zendesk’s well-known clients.

Founder – Mikkel Svane, Alexander Aghassipour, Morten Primdahl

Mikkel Svane, Alexander Aghassipour, and Morten Primdahl created a software platform in 2006 in a spacious loft in Copenhagen to assist businesses in handling customer support demands. Companies needed a method to handle complaints quicker than they could be submitted online because social media platforms like Facebook were empowering the voices of irate users. Zendesk is a tenacious little startup founded to appease discontent.

Neustar

Neustar – Providing Real-Time Data And Analytics Services.

A forerunner in identity resolution, Neustar provides the information and technology necessary to establish reliable connections between businesses and individuals at crucial times. The company provides Industry-leading services in Marketing, Risk, Communications, and Security that connect information about people, devices, and places in a responsible manner. The company serves around 60 of the Fortune 100 companies globally.

About The Company

American technology business Neustar offers real-time data and analytics for the security, digital efficiency, defense, telecoms, entertainment, and marketing sectors. It also offers directory and clearinghouse services to the international communications and Internet sectors. TIll 2018 Neustar also served as the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANP) for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the USA. Their initial agreement was made in 1997, and it was extended through its spinoff in 1999, 2004, and 2012. Somos, Inc. has taken its place as of 2019.

Neustar
Image source: securecdn.pymnts.com

History

In 1998, Neustar was established in Delaware as a division of Lockheed Martin Corporation. It was spun out in order to maintain the neutrality required by its original founding contract with the country’s telecom operators. In 2006, it acquired Followap, a UK-based provider of instant phone texting services. Lisa Hook was appointed the company’s CEO and President in 2010. According to a January 2010 article in The Washington Post, Neustar was picked by a group of tech executives and Hollywood studios to run a system that would allow customers to watch films and other video media from a variety of digital devices. “UltraViolet” was the name of this system. With regard to their caller identification assets, Neustar and Transaction Network Services agreed to an asset acquisition agreement in 2015. Neustar intended to divide itself into two separate, publicly traded businesses the following year. Later that year, Golden Gate Capital and GIC declared that they would acquire all of Neustar’s publicly traded shares for about $2.9 billion. The deal was completed by the end of August 2017. In 2016 Neustar lost e its NPAC contract to Telcordia, a subsidiary of Ericsson. Since 1997, Neustar had managed the number portability system. In 2018, Neustar acquired Verisign’s security services client deals. Later, Neustar acquired TRUSTID, a company that offers contact centers caller verification, and fraud prevention services. In 2020, GoDaddy acquired Neustar’s domain name registration company, which was later rebranded as GoDaddy Registry. In 2021, TransUnion paid $3.1 billion to acquire Neustar’s core business. However, GIC and Golden Gate Capital continued to own Neustar Security Services as a portfolio company, excluding it from the transaction.

Business

Neustar’s primary business from 1998 to 2015 was the management of the NANP, which includes the upkeep of the databases and system of directories that control the phone zip codes and centralized codes in North America. This makes it possible for calls to be routed among thousands of different communication service providers. Additionally, Neustar offered clearinghouse services to new CSPs, such as VoIP service providers, mobile operators, cable television providers, and Internet service providers (ISPs). A number of top-level domains, such as.biz,.us (on behalf of the US Department of Commerce),.co,.NYC (on behalf of NY City), and .in (on behalf of the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI)), are managed by Neustar.

Founder – Jeffrey Ganek

Between 1995 to 2010, Jeffrey Ganek served as Neustar’s founder, chairman, and CEO. In 1999, Ganek oversaw a management buy-out of Neustar, which he had established as a separate division within Lockheed Martin.

CEO – Charles E. Gottdiener

Charles Gottdiener is the CEO of Neustar since 2018. Gottdiener previously worked as an MD at Providence Equity Partners, where he held the positions of Head of Portfolio Operations and COO. A number of Providence portfolio firms, like Blackboard, VRAD, SRA International, and Ascend Learning, had him on their boards or as their interim CEO.

tucows

Tucows – Provider Of Second-Largest Domain Registrar In The World.

Tucows is a company that works to keep people connected and the Internet accessible. With its corporate headquarters in Toronto, Canada, and its incorporation in Pennsylvania, Tucows is an American-Canadian publicly listed Internet solutions and telecommunications firm.

About The Company

Tucows provides SaaS, Fiber Internet Services, and web domain services through its three independent businesses named Tucows Domains, Ting, and Wavelo. As the second-biggest domain registrar in the world and the largest domain name broker, Tucows Domains assists people in creating their websites online. It operates Hover, OpenSRS, and Ascio. Ting Internet, provide communities all across the country with high-speed fibre internet access. Wavelo provides software for telecom billing and operations for Fiber Internet Services and Mobile Virtual Network Operators.

History

Tucows was established in 1993 as a site for downloading freeware and shareware software. In 1996, the company was acquired by Internet Direct. In 1999, STI Ventures bought Tucows. A deal between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN in April of that year put an end to Network Solutions’ monopoly on domain name registration. After obtaining ICANN permission to operate as a domain registrar, It started registering domains for around $13, far less than the initial industry starting price of around $70. In 2000, It introduced the OpenSRS system and entered the arena of wholesale domain name registrations. The OpenSRS system turned become Tucows’ profitable venture, and it made ten times as much money as the entire company did in 1999. In 2001, Tucows announced that it will start issuing multilingual domain names, enabling consumers all around the world to buy domains in their local alphabets. Tucows offered around 70 accessible languages. Later in 2001, the company launched Liberty Registry Management Services (LibertyRMS), which provided so-called “generic top-level” website domains like.info. Later, LibertyRMS was sold by Tucows to Afilias. On August 28, The Company merged with Infonautics, a publicly listed online information services provider that ran the free Encyclopedia.com and subscription-based article database Electric Library. This was a significant development as It was able to go public without having to do an IPO because of this all-stock arrangement. Ownership of Infonautics was transferred to Tucows stockholders, and the combined business, which had a $41 million market value, took the name Tucows Inc.

tucows
Image source: pressablecdn.com

Controversies

For the first time, the USTR included Tucows on its yearly “notorious markets” list in 2015 to serve as an example for domain name registrars who fail to prohibit or suspend sites that offer illicit items. In response, Tucows stated that although it regularly suspended dozens of websites, “unlike certain competitors, it thoroughly investigated all complaints to guarantee they were justified.” It previously served as the registrar of domain names for the controversial American message board 8chan, which Google delisted for harboring child pornography and where several swatting incidents and terrorist plots, including the 2019 New Zealand Terrorist Attack, were disclosed and plotted by users. Additionally, the company serves as the domain name registrant for the white supremacist website Stormfront and the social media network Truth Social. The company devised a plan in 2021 to describe their involvement in addressing domain name misuse.

Founder – Scott Swedorski

In 1991, Flint native Scott Swedorski began serving as the Mott Community College’s computer lab manager. Swedorski noticed a need to make shareware reviews available to the general public before the end of 1992 when he left Mott College to work as the system admin for FALCON at the Genesee County Library System. He founded TUCOWS (The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software) in 1993.

CEO Elliot Noss

Elliot Noss is the CEO of Tucows. He has advocated, agitated, and educated to support and defend an Open Internet throughout the world through his work at Tucows, his participation in ICANN, and his initiatives.

LiveRamp

LiveRamp, A Data Networking Platform For Efficient And Secure Data Utilization.

LiveRamp is a data networking platform for efficient and secure data utilization. LiveRamp allows firms and their partner organizations to better interact, regulate, and invoke data to reshape user experiences and produce more valuable business outcomes. Some of the greatest companies, agencies, and publishers in the world receive end-to-end addressability via LiveRamp’s entirely neutral and interoperable infrastructure.

About The Company

Located in San Francisco, California, LiveRamp is a SaaS company that provides a data connectivity platform. One of its services is data onboarding, which involves transferring offline information online for marketing reasons. After being established in 1969, the firm underwent a number of name changes before acquiring the LiveRamp brand from a business it had acquired. This happened after the Acxiom Marketing Services (AMS) unit of the company was spun off and transferred to the multinational ad network Interpublic Group of Companies.

LiveRamp
Image source: mms.businesswire.com

History

In 1969, Charles D. Ward founded the company Demographics, Inc. in Arkansas. The business’s initial activities included processing payroll and creating mailing lists from phone books. Conway Communications Exchange became the company’s new name in 1980, and in 1983 it became a corporation under the name CCX Network, Inc. and completed its initial public offering. It took the name Acxiom Corporation in 1988. The largest business database in the world belonged to Acxiom until 2018. After the Cambridge Analytica controversy, Acxiom and the data trading sector were the subject of intense public scrutiny. New privacy regulations in California and the EU fundamentally altered the sector. In response, Acxiom sold its databases and brand for $2.3 billion, changed its name to Liveramp, and positioned itself as a standard for data interchange among global data marketplaces. In 2019, LiveRamp acquired Faktor, a developer of consent management platforms. LiveRamp paid $150 million to acquire the Boston-based TV analytics startup Data Plus Math. In 2020, the company unveiled Privacy Manager, its own platform for managing consent. Later in the year, the company introduced Safe Haven, a technology that enables media owners and advertisers to share consumer data while upholding privacy regulations.

Products

IdentityLink( now Data Marketplace) is LiveRamp’s flagship product today. It gives data owners the ability to use its algorithms to match a person’s data with hundreds of identifiers and to augment it with data from third parties. Organizations can enter the content of their CRM or POS platforms, and it will be linked utilizing AI technology with sources of data including publicly available data and ‘contextual cues’ like the weather in your present location. The procedure currently referred to as “Data Onboarding” relies heavily on browser cookies to integrate additional data. The company’s Authenticated Traffic Solutions (ATS) tool helps publishers and marketers to connect their data sources without utilizing browser cookies. The company’s Data Plus Math product helps firms, advertisers, cable operators, streaming platforms, and networks to know who is viewing their advertisements, Data Plus Math offers media measurement services.

Founder – Auren Hoffman

Auren Hoffman is the former CEO and co-founder of LiveRamp. Hoffman cofounded Rapleaf in 2006 and ran it as CEO until 2012 when he resigned to lead LiveRamp, a spinoff of Rapleaf that had been acquired by TowerData, an email marketing firm. In 2014, Acxiom acquired LiveRamp. Hoffman left the company after a year of this acquisition.

CEO – Scott Howe

Scott Howe is the CEO of LiveRamp. Howe headed Acxiom, the previous parent company of LiveRamp, from 2011 to 2018. Howe held executive positions at Microsoft and aQuantive before joining Acxiom in 2011. Scott obtained a bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton University and an MBA degree from Harvard University.

FANUC

FANUC – The Largest Manufacturer Of Industrial Robots Worldwide.

Established in 1956, FANUC is a pioneer in automation technology and a specialist in Japanese-made CNC, Robots, and Robomachines. Additionally, FANUC provides customer service as long as its clients continue to utilize its products By encouraging automation and effectiveness in its clients’ factories, the company supports the growth of the industrial sectors in Japan and abroad.

About The Company

FANUC aka Fuji Automatic NUmerical Control is a Japanese conglomerate of businesses that offers automation services and products such as robotics and wireless computer numerical control systems. The conglomerate is the largest manufacturer of industrial robots worldwide. It has offices in more than 46 countries and more than 240 joint ventures and subsidiaries. With over 65% share in the global market, it holds the top spot as the leading manufacturer of CNC controls. The company is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is a part of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX stock indices.

FANUC
Image source: industryeurope.com

History

Seiuemon Inaba, a young engineer at the time, was asked by Fujitsu Ltd. to head up a new company with the aim of developing the domain of numerical control(NC).  To create programmable versions of the lathe machine, presses, and milling machines, this early form of automation included transmitting instructions encoded into punchcards or magnetic tapes to motors that regulated the operation of tools. After investing a lot of money in research and development, he and his team of 500 people shipped Fujitsu’s first NC machine to Makino Milling Machine in just three years. FANUC Ltd. was created in 1972. CNC, which was the next stage of growth, was based on G-code, a common programming language. The ten largest CNC firms in the world at the time were American-based, but by 1982, the Japanese company had seized half of the global CNC market. In order to manufacture and sell robots in the United States, FANUC and General Motors formed a joint venture known as GMFanuc Robotics Corporation in 1982. Numerous Japanese and American electronics and vehicle manufacturers are among the company’s clients. Corporations like Panasonic are able to operate factories that manufacture over 2 million TV sets per month (mainly premium plasma LCD panels) with just 25 employees by the use of company industrial robots. The company is a top producer of factory automation solutions.

Subsidiaries

The main subsidiaries of the company are the Japanese FANUC Corporation, Fanuc America Corporation, and the Luxembourg-based FANUC Europe Corporation S.A. FANUC Europe Corporation, with its headquarters in Luxembourg, which serves European clients and offers sales, service, and support both domestically and internationally. FANUC America Corporation is primarily responsible for companies’ operations in South & North America.  The most recent edition, which was established in 2013, integrates FANUC operations in the Americas, including those of the old FANUC Robotics America Corporation (1992–2013) and FANUC CNC America (2010–2013), which superseded an earlier edition of FANUC America Corporation.

Founder – Seiuemon Inaba

Japanese roboticist Seiuemon Inaba founded FANUC and served as its honorary chairman. He played a crucial part in the growth of the robotic industry. For his groundbreaking work in numerically controlled machine tools, factory automation, and services to engineering research and education, he was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Engineering in 1992.

CEO – Dr. Eng. Yoshiharu Inaba

Dr. Eng. Yoshiharu Inaba is the CEO of FANUC. Since January 2012, Yoshiharu Inaba has also held the positions of President, Chief Director of Marketing, and Representative Director of FANUC CORPORATION. In September 1983, he began working for the company. He has held the positions of Senior Managing Director and Managing Director in the past. He was formerly employed with Isuzu Motors Limited.

Stryker Corporation

Dr. Homer Stryker, Founded Stryker Corporation Manufacturers Of Medical Technologies.

Stryker Corporation is amongst the leading manufacturers of medical technologies. Through the commitment of over 43,000 employees worldwide, the company provides a wide range of cutting-edge products and services in the fields of orthopedics, medicine and surgery, neurotechnology, and spine that assist enhance patient and hospital outcomes.

About The Company

American global medical technology company Stryker Corporation is headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The company manufactures various products like surgical instruments and surgical navigation systems, endoscopic and communications systems, patient handling as well as emergency hospital instruments, neurosurgical, neurovascular, and spinal devices. The majority of Stryker’s items are advertised directly to physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare organizations in the United States. Stryker products are available internationally in more than 100 nations via company-owned sales divisions, branches, as well as independent dealers, and distributors.

Stryker Corporation
Image Source: tipranks.com

History

Dr. Homer Stryker, an orthopedist from Michigan founded The Orthopedic Frame Company, the forerunner of Stryker Corporation, in 1941. Among other things, Stryker invented the walking heel, the cast cutter, a device that eliminated cast material without harming underlying tissues, and the Turning Frame, a portable hospital bed that enabled the shifting of injured patients whilst maintaining necessary body immobility. The corporation was formally renamed Stryker Corporation in 1964. Stryker had its IPO in 1979, and after acquiring Osteonics Corporation, it entered the market for orthopedic implants such as replacement hips and knees. Annual sales peaked at $2.1 billion in 1999, and Stryker first appeared in the famous Forbes Platinum 400 and S&P 500 in 2000. Sales topped $3 billion in 2002, and Stryker made its debut in the Fortune 500. By 2012, the company had a global workforce of about 22,000 people and $8.7 billion in sales. Overseas sales accounted for 35% of those sales. Stryker, with an overall portfolio sales exceeding $8.6 billion, was placed at number 10 in a 2012 world market overview of the leading medical technology companies. Additionally, the company retains market shares of 35% globally for reconstructive surgery, 50% globally for medical surgery, and 15% globally for neurotechnology and spine.

Controversies

The Food and Drug Administration has issued three warning letters to the corporation since early 2007 due to non-compliance issues. There is a legal issue involving a subpoena linking Stryker Corp. to the aforementioned product sales misbehavior between the corporation and the US Department of Justice. In 2012, Stryker recalled several medical vacuum devices sold underneath the Neptune Waste Management System name. When the vacuum was accidentally used to draw a passive drainage tube, the devices—some of which had not been approved by the FDA—caused an accident that resulted in death. After it was determined that the Stryker Rejuvenate hip replacement was deemed faulty and could result in adverse effects comparable to those of DePuy hip implants, the FDA issued a warning for the hip replacement in 2012. As a result, Stryker was hit with fines of $1 billion and $2 billion in 2014 for their products which can result in severe agony.

Founder – Homer Stryker

The founder of Stryker Corporation is Homer Stryker. He is most recognized for his innovations that revolutionized orthopedic care and made life easier for medical professionals and hospital employees while also giving comfort to patients. In 1946, he established Orthopedic Frame Company Inc. to manufacture and market his inventions, even though his hospital bed product hadn’t yet been granted a patent. In 1964, Homer Stryker left the practice of medicine, and his business, formerly known as the “Orthopedic Frame Company,” changed its name to “Stryker Corporation.”

CEO – Kevin A. Lobo

Kevin A. Lobo has served as Stryker’s CEO since 2012. In 2014, he was appointed chair of the board. He joined the company in 2011. Mr. Lobo has a lengthy business career spanning several sectors. He has worked for reputed companies like Rhone-Poulenc, KPMG, Unilever, and Kraft Canada.