CredForce : A Global Leader In The Making

Blue ocean ideas have a great capacity to disrupt. But if they’re thriving inside organizations like CredForce –such ideas don’t just disrupt; they break new grounds too! It is not often, that you find a company virtually starting an entirely new industry, and that too, on a global scale – single-handed!

For the uninitiated, CredForce is the world’s first, fully integrated provider of products, services and solutions related to credentialing, capability validation and standards development and the largest yet in the business. It is noteworthy that the company has been on Silicon Review’s radar for the past few years–primarily for its immense potential to contribute to growth of companies and professionals around the world through certification and credentialing. However, the company makes to our 2017’s list of 50 Best Indian Founded Companies, for reasons that are very different, and probably, exemplary and illustrative of how new businesses, based on groundbreaking ideas need to manage growth and scale themselves up.

CredForce has offices in Austin, London, Cape Town, Singapore, Bangalore and Mumbai, besides its network offices covering 170+ countries. But we decided to go check out their Global Delivery center in Gurugram closer home, and dig up what drives CredFolks – as members of the CredForce family call themselves.

Several sign-ups greet you in the foyer of this CredForce facility. The first that strikes you is about the talent management summit being mounted in association with The Wharton School in Philadelphia. The other one that we remember is about the CredStar employee recognition program. Clearly, they are storming ahead, both within their teams and with the world’s most prestigious insitutions as global partners.

When you move around inside, you see all rooms surrounding a gigantic bay having interesting names to them – drawing either from nostalgia, or business, or thought leaders or greats. Like two executive meeting rooms – Qingdao and Heliopolis – named after the Chinese and Egyptian towns where CredForce executed its first international projects in Outsourcing standards. Then, you have meeting rooms named after the greatest rivers of the world, signifying perennial flow, and hence freshness. The boardroom is called Socrates, for reasons that are quite obvious for a company most of whose business is just discovering and generating new knowledge and building models for organizational and professional excellence.

The second thing that strikes you is the simplicity and brilliance of the strategies and methods CredForce has deployed to expand geographically and diversify across verticals. “As much as possible, we never enter a market or a region with a single line of products; it’s at least two lines, to ensure our eggs are safe, split across multiple baskets” Says Rajiv Gupta, the President and Group CEO of CredForce, a Wharton Fellow and an ISB alumnus. “…and even these products have diverse targets - B2C, B2B, government and institutional markets! That further de-risks our business in the new markets.” adds Sanjeeva Shukla, the Chief Product Officer. And he should know. CredForce today exclusively markets and manages 30 international certification programs in Digital Marketing, Talent Management, Data Science and Outsourcing, with around a dozen more in Investment Banking and Business Strategy to hit the market later this year.

You talk more with some other leads and managers, and the third secret tumbles out of the cupboard: CredForce uses the partnership mode to the best that they can, to expand swiftly across markets, keep market-entry costs to a bare minimum, reduce exit-barriers, “..and board most of the business-risks to partners!” we smile silently. Universities and b-schools like Wharton; consulting firms, training companies and service providers like Pearson – all of them keep CredForce expanding and growing its reach.

“The team drives itself; we just navigate when the waters get rough”, explains Rajiv, surprisingly humble for his achievements and the recognition he’s got – including Entrepreneur of the Year from TLI, CHRO Asia among others.

Perhaps, that explains a part of what CredForce has achieved in such a short span of five years. It made the BRICS list of 100 fastest growing companies right within two years of starting out, and has been consistently recognized among the most innovative, high-potential and top BPM companies by several prestigious national and international publications since its inception.

The inclusion of organizations like CredForce in Silicon Review studies and rankings reflects our continuing focus on recognizing companies, more on the basis their potential to impact industry, business, economies and careers, than merely ranking them for their revenues and profitability.

“We exclusively market and manage 30 international certification programs in Digital Marketing, Talent Management, Data Science and Outsourcing.”