Role Model
All Cache
 Prarthana Gupta, Director, Cache Group, has proved her mettle in IT solutions field—a male-dominated profession. Armed with grit and determination, she is all geared to up the stakes now
CRN Network
Bagging new clients is easy; maintaining and deepening your relationship with the ones you have isn’t,” says Prarthana Gupta, Director, Cache Group. Leading her business with a marked enthusiasm, Prarthana is of a firm opinion that her strong relationship with end-users has made her and her business a success that it is today.
In the beginning
After graduating in Computer Science from Amravati University in 1989, Prarthana landed in Delhi. “I am from Banaras. A small town like that had limited scope for a BTech engineer, so I relocated to Delhi with hopes to make a better future.”
Prarthana started her career with Delhi-based QuantM Net Technologies as a service and support personnel where she did Unix installation, and also doubled up as a hardware engineer and repaired desktops and laptops. After a short stint at the company, she joined Groovy Communications as a systems manager.
In 1991, she was approached by her engineering college mate, Alok Gupta, to join his startup company Cache Systems. “Though Alok and I went to the same college, we hardly interacted on the campus. But when I came to Delhi, he helped me get a job with QuantM. While I was at Groovy, he along with his friend started Cache. But as fate would have it, his partner quit and he approached me to join the company,” recalls Prarthana.
But leaving the job and starting a business wasn’t easy. “My family was dead against me starting my own company. Belonging to a service-class family, my parents felt that business was too risky,” she recalls smilingly.
However, both Alok and Prarthana decided to slug it out. The first few months were difficult, but within six months the company started getting some big clients and that inspired their confidence. “Initially, we stayed afloat by undertaking several small AMC and computer servicing jobs. Soon enough, we bagged AMC accounts of companies such as Hindalco Industries, ModiLuft and JK Synthetics.”
In 1992, Alok and Prarthana decided to convert their business partnership into a life-long matrimonial alliance.
In 1994, Cache began its stint as a corporate reseller for both HP and IBM. Following which it branched into two companies Cache Digitech, that handled the services business, and Cache Technologies, focussed on corporate reselling.
One of the persons she credits for her success is Lata Singh who was then the relationship manager at IBM and is currently Director, Partner and Alliances at CA. “During the initial stages, she hand-held me and guided me through the difficult times,” says Prarthana.
Cache’s big break came in 1996, when it gained access into education segment and bagged several customers including Ghaziabad-based Ajay Kumar Garg Engineering College, Krishna Engineering College, IMS Engineering College and Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) with the help of Manish Gupta, who was heading the volume business for IBM servers in India then.
“Customer-relationship was my forte and I forged a strong bond with the institutes. It was a time when HCL machines were preferred. I managed to convince them to buy IBM machines at a premium. Also, with the help of the IBM team, we set up IBM labs at all these institutes, which gave further fillip to our IBM business.”
Her sales skills in the education segment gave her the title of Jhasi ki rani. “So aggressive was
I in my selling skills that if my name was mentioned, others withdrew their quotation.”
In 2001, Nitin Garg—current General Manager, Government Sales at Lenovo India—joined IBM and was assigned as Cache’s Partner Manager. He signed the company as WSP (Warranty Service Partner) and FMS (Facilities Management Services) partner, despite it being small (Rs 3 crore). Impressed by Prarthana’s business skills, he pushed Cache to become a RBC (Royal Blue Club) partner for IBM.
At that time, there were less than 10 RBC partners in the country.
Next on Prarthana’s list was power sector. In 2002, Cache bagged a full-fledged multi-year FMS contract and multiple orders for IBM from NDPL and Reliance worth a few crores which kick-started its system integration business.
In 2007, Cache managed to score big orders from several large customers including Jindal Steel and Power, Bhushan Power and Steel, and Ranbaxy Laboratories. “We became the leading service provider for IBM and Lenovo in North India and started getting SAP hardware orders thanks to the support of Director, Sales at Lenovo then, Vivek Malhotra (currently the Vice President, Global Mid-Market Business, IBM India).
Current business
In eight years time, from 2001 to 2009, the company’s growth has been almost 10 fold. In FY2007-08, Cache clocked in Rs 15 crore in revenue. For FY2009-10, the SI showed 110 percent growth and recorded a topline of Rs 33 crore. Prarthana is optimistic that Cache Group will see a turnover of over Rs 50 crore this fiscal.
One of the main reasons for Cache’s success over the last two years despite the slowdown has been its focus on telecom sector, which currently contributes 50 percent to the company’s total turnover. New mobile service providers Aircel and S Tel, and Bharti Airtel have been Cache’s leading telecom clients. “We are into solutions designing. We cater to all hardware requirements of their VAS providers as well,” she offers.
One of the main projects Cache undertook in 2009 was Airtel’s Smart Hand project. It deployed 120 engineers to take care of Airtel’s IT infrastructure at 12 data centers across India. Cache is also executing its data center relocation. Till date, it has relocated 16 data centers from client locations to Airtel.
Another big project in the telecom sector last year was the deployment of 200 servers and 500 high-end workstations at Aricent. At present, the SI is working on several other projects in the telecom sector.
Another growth area for the company has been its focus on providing SAP hardware integration services.
In FY2009-10, it provided complete hardware solution for SAP implementations at Relaxo, Dalmia, Unitech, Ireo, Sarvodaya Hospital and Anjani Technoplast, on IBM’s P-series servers.
Over the last couple of years Cache has added more brand like Cisco, Symantec, Oracle, Acer, HP, and VXL to its portfolio. It recently signed up with a UK-based CAD/CAM company and will distribute their software in India.
Future map
“Our roadmap is to cross Rs 100-crore mark in the next two years. We want to become bigger than all SIs in India, may be one of the largest IT solution providers,” says Prarthana.
Cache is looking at setting up a NOC for remote infrastructure management services (RIMS) very soon. It has already bagged orders from an Israel-based fraud management company to manage its equipments deployed at telecom customers globally.
According to Prarthana, the company has just scratched the surface of opportunities in the telecom sector. This fiscal too it will be actively exploring the several opportunities presented by the sector. The company will also be pursuing power, manufacturing and SMB segment for ERP deployment, data centre and DR solutions.
“We are looking at expanding our team. We have already appointed 35 executives in sales. We plan to divide them into three teams: projects, large enterprises and SMB. We are in the process of developing product-wise skillsets, to be able to provide multi-technology solutions across domains such as network, storage, security, database, middleware and open source,” she adds.
Partners for life
Alok and Prarthana head different companies under the Cache Group—while Alok looks after Cache Digitech, she looks after Cache Technologies. “We do discuss about our individual business and about the overall group, however we never tell each other what to do. We respect each other’s spaces,” says Prarthana.
Earlier the two did discuss business at home; however, their kids have made a law that no business will be discussed at the dining table and during the family time.
Prarthana counts Alok and his family has her source of strength. “Alok’s family has been supportive of me from the beginning. His parents never dissuaded me from my work and in fact shared a lot of responsibilities in order to facilitate my work,” she adds.
Despite all the success, she still believes that her journey has just begun. “We have started on a new journey to make Cache one of the most respected IT companies with best of breed system integration and services skill-sets,” she concludes. |