Kuala Lumpur, March 9 – (This article is written by Karan Ponnudurai (photo), Chief Digital Services Officer at Celcom Axiata, in conjunction with the 30th year anniversary celebrations of ‘Murasu Anjal’ scheduled to be held on Saturday, 14th of March 2015 from 7.00 pm to 9.30 pm at the Temple of Fine Arts Auditorium, Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur. Karan has been involved in the mobile and wireless space for over 30 years. He has been active in trying to find new offerings in the digital and multimedia space. “Murasu Anjal” is a popular Tamil software created by Muthu Nedumaran from Malaysia which has been used by more than 1 million users across the world since 1985)
There was once a famous consulting company that ran an advertisement about innovation which said “There are no old roads to new directions.” Many people believed that in being innovative, you had to throw out old ideas and embrace the new.
In 2006, much as it has remained since, the mobile industry was undergoing rapid change, with many new kinds of phones and services flooding the market. There were many new capabilities and gimmicks that mobile companies were trying to introduce in order to get customers, and Celcom was no exception. There was hardly a day passed when some vendor was approaching us with a new product guaranteeing to provide us multiples more revenue.
It was in this environment where Celcom was introduced to a gentleman named Muthu Nedumaran and his new product called Sellinam.
Muthu’s confidence in his product was only surpassed by his passion with which he felt for the need for Sellinam by the Malaysian mobile customer. It was very clear that this was a product that he was not promoting because he felt it would make him financially rich, but one that would contribute meaningfully to the needs of the Tamil speaking population of the country.
They would have a messaging product that would allow them to participate in the mobile revolution in their own language and not be constrained to rely on another language to express themselves. Amazingly, we found that no such other product had even catered for languages of the region such as Tamil.
As we became more familiar with Sellinam it became apparent that as a national operator, not only was it our duty to support such a product, but we had a product that was developed to exacting quality . If there was any feature we wanted changed, Muthu would see to it himself that it was done, such was the pride that he felt in the product. It was only much later on that we learned that Sellinam is a product of a world-recognised leader in typography, and in it, we had a developer and product of world class standard, who were fully Malaysian. We are immensely proud to have been the first mobile telco to have the opportunity to work with Muthu and launched Sellinam in 2006.
Times have changed a lot in the years since we first launched. The capabilities of phones and devices have improved by leaps and bounds, and perhaps the original product now looks pale in comparison.
However…perhaps that old advertisement was not quite right. There are old roads in the Tamil language that the Sellinam product took in a new direction, and in the process, opened up a new era in communication for a whole community.
When I think back of the excitement that greeted the product I am proud that by going back to a core belief in language as empowerment, Celcom has played a part in bringing, together with Sellinam, a product for the future. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Muthu on this anniversary, and I know, in the words of the Tamil proverb… Thaai ettu adi paanja, kutti pathinaaru adi paayum (If the mother (tiger) leaps 8 feet, the cub will leap 16 feet).
-Karan Ponnudurai
Chief Digital Services Officer at Celcom Axiata
