Meet the 'election guru' of Obama and Clinton

Ravi Singh aims to empower politicians by effectively planning campaigns using software technology.

It's election time, and Ravi Singh, the founder of US-based ElectionMall Technologies, knows what it means to be in India.

"Yes, this is an interesting time to be in India," says the entrepreneur, who had once aspired to become a politician in the US. Known as "campaign guru" in the US, he has now set a goal to make his company a "democracy laboratory" by empowering every politician in the world with his company, which aims at effectively planning election campaigns using software technology.

Born and brought up in the US, Singh, whose father was a doctor, pursued political science in college and even unsuccessfully dabbled in politics in the US in 1998 when he ran for office in the Illinois general assembly at the age of 25. Following that, he realised that lack of technology and proper planning makes election campaigning really chaotic.

"To me, campaigning was chaotic, a last minute rush. I tried to work with 54 different providers. But I don't look at it as a loss. I wrote down every problem I faced and based on that founded a mall that provides the technology for election management," recalls Singh.

ElectionMall, using its proprietary IT applications, provides tools and services to campaigns, resulting in increased awareness and funds, while votes do the rest. It also creates web pages for contestants and manages the content.  

President George Bush was Singh's first client in 1999. The ongoing elections in the US is a big opportunity for Singh, who has clients among both Democrats and Republicans. The software provided by ElectionMall Technologies is in place for Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

One of the biggest challenges being faced by politicians is money transfer. The US is spending $9.8 billion (about Rs 39,200 crore) for the ongoing presidential election. Hillary Clinton raised over $10 million (about Rs 40 crore) online in a single day for her election campaign.

Obama has raised over $10 million so far. Even John McCain, who lost the Republican nomination to George W Bush in 2000, raised $2 million (about Rs 8 crore) in 48 hours.

Singh says what he is doing in the US is just a small bit of larger opportunities. "In the US, 1.2 million candidates stand for elections. Even though we are managing just 634 campaigns this year, this is fairly good progress compared to the previous year when we managed 50 campaigns," says Singh, adding that the business of democracy never ends.

"In 2009, the elections in the UK will happen, followed by the EU elections. After November this year, my business model does not end. There is an election happening almost everyday in the world," says Singh.

Singh has succeeded in attracting some major investors too. The main investor in the company is George Spix, a confidant of Microsoft founder and Chairman Bill Gates, who invested $3.5 million in the company. ElectionMall Technologies has so far filed for over 63 patents in the US.

It's not that the company was not facing any competition. Till a year after it started, there was absolutely no competition in this space. In 2002, it started feeling the heat. A number of companies have started exploiting opportunities in this space. Keeping this in view, ElectionMall has now started offering "on demand politics" in a software as a service (SaaS) model.

Singh has now set his eye on Indian political parties, though he believes that India is at least eight years behind the US in using technology for election campaigning. "We do see some technology adoption by political parties in India. But we have a long way to go here," he says.

Singh, who had been visiting India for the last eight years, is looking out for local partners. He has now set up an Indian subsidiary called eSolutions, with VC funding, an announcement to which will be made shortly. Singh believes now that he has a footing in India and a corporate venture partner, the days are not far when fortunes from elections will knock at his door in India as well.

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