By Amit Singh, CRN, January 3, 2011, 1200 hrs
In Search Of Excellence
To become an IT entrepreneur was more of a dream than a need for Pankaj Ratra and his three friends, Tarun Aggarwal, Aasheesh Garg and Hitesh Arora. It was during their MCA from IMT Ghaziabad that they planned to start a business in IT after completing the course and getting a year of practical software development experience.
Ratra completed his MCA in 1990; the other three, who happened to be his seniors, finished a year earlier. Aggarwal joined TCS as a programmer, Garg IFCI as a programmer, Arora Nucleus Software as a systems engineer, and Ratra International Data Management as a systems engineer. After acquiring 1-1.5 years of experience in their respective organizations they left their jobs to start Path Infotech in July 1991.
Path is now a Noida-based public limited company with three branches (Mumbai, Singapore and US), more than 400 employees, and revenue of Rs 84 crore. The company’s clientele includes Citibank, Maruti Udyog, Kotak Mahindra, EXL Services, LG Electronics, CitiFinancial, Videocon, NIC, Canon India, Amar Ujala and the Comptroller & Auditor General.
Early days
Path Infotech began with an investment of Rs 70,000, provided equally by the partners from their savings. They took up software development projects and provided corporate training in various tools and applications.
Soon after they started, the company faced a lot of hurdles. “In the initial years the perception of software development in India was not favorable. The general attitude was to get software free or at minimal cost. At the same time, the acceptance of young people like us as consultants didn’t come easily—and none of us had any business background,” recalls Ratra.
Adds Tarun Aggarwal, Director, Technology, Path, “We never sought any financial support from our families. However, their unconditional moral support was always there to drive us ahead. Along with finding projects in software development, we also undertook data, claim and application processing projects for the survival of our business.”
The company was not doing well till 1994 but somehow managed to meet its expenses. “At around this time, when business was just not coming our way, we faced a major jolt when one of our partners decided to quit. We however, decided to go ahead and give our business some more time,” Ratra says.
Shortly after, the company won from Citibank a compliance reporting software development project on the Oracle platform worth Rs 15 lakh. It also executed an automation project for Citibank worth Rs 20 lakh; this entailed software development for posting and reconciliation of account transactions.
From 1998 to 2002, Path executed major projects worth Rs 20 crore for Avco Financial Services. The projects entailed the development of applications for the processing of automobile loans, institutional loans, equipment loans, personal loans and loans against property.
The company also transitioned toward systems building and took on various projects for the implementation of Oracle database, ERP and CRM. In 1997 Path executed an ERP project valued at Rs 7 lakh for Punj Lloyd, and in 1998 for Asahi India valued at Rs 10 lakh.
Path started offering Oracle database and middleware management services in 1997, and in 2000 introduced a full-fledged managed services business including application management and infrastructure management. Some of its initial customers included Wipro, Escorts, Ralson and Hero.
Current business
Path Infotech is now guided by Ratra handling the business development, sales and marketing portfolio. Garg, Director looks after finance, HR and administration, while Aggarwal is the Director, Technology.
During the turn-of-the-decade recession the company grew 49 percent from Rs 50 crore in FY2008-09 to Rs 74.61 crore in FY2009-10. In FY2010-11 the company grew 12.8 percent with its revenue rising to Rs 84 crore. Of its revenue in the last fiscal, 74 percent came from systems building, 18 percent from solutions, and the rest from managed services.
“In FY2010-11 we maintained the momentum gained in the recession during which customers became inclined toward SMBs that brought value to solutions at reasonable prices. The recession was also beneficial for us as during this period we learned to innovate and put in extra effort to get new products and services into our portfolio,” explains Garg. “We remain glued to our business philosophy to stay committed and truthful to our customers and our employees. We have retained old customers and added new ones due to our focus on adding value to our offerings as well as on providing simple solutions to complex problems.”
In 2009-10 Path executed a software development project valued at Rs 1.2 crore for Videocon to develop a service CRM application for registering, processing and allocating after-sales-service and AMC calls.
The company also executed a project to develop and implement an affiliate management system for ESPN Star Sports in 2010. In the same year, Path completed a project to implement Oracle ERP for the Gold Plus Group in New Delhi.
In addition, Path developed and implemented an innovative payment and receipt system for Kotak Mahindra Old Mutual Life Insurance in 2010.
The company has more than 100 people dedicated to IT managed services out of whom over 25 are vendor-certified; its project managers are ITIL V3 foundation-certified. Says Ratra, “We provide managed services with both an onsite and remote support model. On the infrastructure front we have three leased lines for uninterrupted connectivity to support customers remotely.”
Path is ISO certified since 2002, and currently holds ISO 9001-2008 certification. The company also got the SE 1B credit rating from Crisil in 2011. “At the same time, besides Sugar CRM, we have also implemented in-house automated applications for financial accounting, billing, purchasing and order processing,” Ratra informs.
Future plans
Sensing the tough times ahead due to the economic uncertainty, Path is undergoing transformation in its business processes. “We are introducing a lot of changes in our processes to become efficient and maintain consistency in the quality of our services,” explains Ratra. “To grow our bottomline we are taking a product-based approach under which we have developed various software as standard products to offer. And to become more efficient we have developed a library of codes to automate certain processes in software development.”
The company targets a modest 10 percent growth to attain revenue of Rs 92 crore in FY2011-12. However, Path is ambitious enough to target revenue of Rs 450 crore in FY2015-16 by focusing on BI and analytics, mobility applications and managed services. The company has plans to deepen its reach by deep focusing on verticals such as BFSI, process manufacturing and IT/ITeS.
On a personal note
Ratra considers the late Steve Jobs of Apple to be his business role model because of his massive contribution to the IT industry through his innovations which provided simple solutions to complex problems. Believing in the mantra of living life by example, Ratra vows to lead his life in a way that would motivate others.
He loves to read management books in his free time or during travel. Some of his favorite books include Good to Great by Jim Collins, Chanakya on Management by Ashok Garde, and The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld. He is currently reading the online version of Alexander the Great by Robin Lane Fox. Ratra is fond of the late Jagjit Singh’s ghazals, and loves to spend time with the kids and trying his hand at cooking as well.
He currently owns a Toyota Innova but aspires to buy a BMW convertible—as demanded by his daughter. His favorite weekend destination is Dehra Dun, and he wishes to spend a holiday in Leh. |