'Working for others overshadows entrepreneurial expertise'

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Namrata Kath Hazarika | 05 Mar, 2013
In an exclusive interview with SME Times, Nishant Gupta, Managing Director, Radiant Info Solutions Pvt Ltd said that the reason why he had started his own entity because he felt that this would help him to grow his entrepreneurial expertise, which got overshadowed during the time he was working as an employee with big corporates. He feels that this has been a kicking factor for him to come up with his start-up venture.

Excerpts of the interview...

What made you start your entrepreneurial journey? Could you tell our readers about the challenges that you have come across through your growth path?
Nishant Gupta: I have started my career in 1995 and my last assignment was with the Discovery Channel as a Manager IT Infrastructure. During those seven years of experience, I had seen all latest technologies & media glamour but what I found was that working with big companies gives you only a suffice, circle and above all its surname and your own name gets very feeble with that surname of the organization. I.e., the aura of that company's name is that big that your own name gets overshadowed. I have always thought of creating my own organization where people should know me by my name. I had started my career with Microtech computers then Chipsoft Technologies and then shifted to Discovery Channel where I worked as manager IT infrastructure and final landed in my own venture in the year 2007.

You felt that this step would help to show your expertise...
Nishant Gupta: Indeed, being my own boss was one of the kicking factor.

Could you highlight about the USP of your present company?
Nishant Gupta: We are a key distributor for many brands in Networking arena. In normal scenario, either someone is a distributor or an integrator. Normally traders sell without having much knowledge of the product because it is just box selling rather than giving a solution and creating a value addition. Here, we are acting as a value added distributor for products like Molex, Leviton, Rittal, APC, Yealink etc. All these are leading brands having international presence and catering all aspects of an IT setup. As a value addition we support our channel partners in solution designing as well and creates a difference and increasing our channel base every day.

Are SMEs not aware of the latest technologies? At this juncture, do you think Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face much challenges with expanding and modernizing their IT set up?
Nishant Gupta: I do not think so, what I feel is that SMEs are doing better than big enterprises I.e., SMEs have limited requirements and they are able to fulfill them. SMEs do not always need an ERP solution for their business whereas an enterprise can't work without an ERP. SMEs too are aware of the latest technology & Gizmos and keeps on implementing it in small capsules where as a big enterprise normally roll out on a mass level and needs high budgets and planning. SMEs are more capable to set up an IT infrastructure compared to big enterprises as 'bigs' either do 'big' or do not do at all. As I said, if the organization is small, there requirements are small. We cannot have 50 users company to have a big data centers catering to 500 users. But an enterprise who have 500 users, cannot survive with a data center for 50 users. A SME can start with small IT setup and can go big and gradually they can achieve their all IT requirements. Majority of our customers are SMEs.

You are an IT infrastructure solutions provider, how according to you does infrastructure outsourcing help in the growth of a business?
Nishant Gupta: The outsourcing business was started almost 2 decades back when we almost started our career. I was an outsourced engineer to a company, when I took feedback from that company on what makes them spend three times as contract charges to my company for me than the salary I was getting? The CFO gave me a simple and crisp answer "My business is spare parts production and I want to invest my money and energy only into the production. I want to hire people and put efforts on their training to increasing my revenue. It's irrelevant to spend money and time on an IT or administration staff, continuously train them as technology changes every moment. Who will take care of their technological needs? So, the mantra is "outsource all those things which are not related to your core business area and focus on your revenue generators".

Is online marketing cost effective for SMEs?
Nishant Gupta: We do not provide online marketing services but we are using this medium as our key marketing system for our own company. It's an economical and faster method viz a viz hiring too many sales force and putting money in road shows, their product trainings etc. Sales people can approach a very small segment of people only and do meeting or product demonstration to one-on-one, may be only five - seven people in a day. On the other side, online marketing one can target thousands of potential buyers in one go. An online campaign can easily be amended or replaced at almost no cost. Changing a campaign in conventional marketing costs huge as it may require changing hoardings, re do of road shows & Ads in print media etc., an online marketing campaign can be tracked easily, replaced and easily pushed. You can choose the segment of people whom you want to target, which cannot be done in physical marketing that easily.

How much is digitization popular among SMEs? And are they taking it seriously?
Nishant Gupta: We are using it to a great extent. We have all the latest technology in our office. We have voice over IP in our offices. We have online tools which we are using here. We have all the latest IT infrastructure as it save our costs and improve productivity and soon we will be having a paper-less office.

What kind of business expansion plan have you decided from now?
Nishant Gupta: Last year we have started our operations in Bangalore & Jaipur. This fiscal year we are starting operations in Chandigarh, UP and Gujarat that is on the cards. We will have to increase our sales force in these locations. The products & services will be more or less the same. It will be a replication of our other offices focussing only on the channel business initially and gradually enterprise as well.

As a SME, what kind of challenges do you face in your day to day operations?
Nishant Gupta: That is a good question and unanswered as yet. Many people ask me this question. As you see, every transaction is a challenge today. How to get more business is a challenge? Investment is a challenge, return on investment is a challenge. Clients do not pay in time is also a big challenge. To have good sales force / team is another challenge. In a SME, manpower switches to big enterprises quite often, that's also a big challenge. Wherever we are today in the last six years, it could have been better if I could have pulled someone who have good money and we could have shared ideas and money, probably which would have helped us to be in a much better place by this time. This is not only with us but with every SME who are into our kind of business as on today.

(Namrata Kath Hazarika can be contacted at namratakh@tradeindia.com)