 Role Model
Pioneering Reverse Logistics
Shammi Moza, MD, RT Outsourcing shares his journey from being a service engineer to heading one of India’s largest reverse logistics company in the IT space
CRN Network
One of the pioneers of third-party, post-sales support and RMA services in the country, RT Outsourcing since its inception in 1995 has grown to a formidable size of Rs 110 crore. With nearly 3,500 employees, service outlets in 400 locations across 200 cities in the country and partnerships with leading IT and telecom vendors, the company has gained the reputation of being among the best and biggest reverse logistics companies in the country.
And of course the credit for this goes to Shammi Moza, founding MD of RT who had the vision to start a business focused on providing third-party post-sales support in the early nineties when the IT industry was in a nascent stage.
The beginning
Moza began his career as a service engineer for IT products at Blue Star in 1986. Within a span of three years, he scaled the ranks to head the service business of the North and East region. Soon enough, he was the youngest manager in his division. After almost four years, in 1990, Moza switched jobs to join CMC. There he handled HP and Sun hardware. But he yearned to do something more than a routine job.
“During my stint with Blue Star and CMC, I had become well-versed with servicing HP products and had established a good rapport with the team. While at CMC, the HP team made me an offer to work as a part-time service engineer handling select customers, working after office hours,” recalls Moza.
Soon enough, the business started growing and Moza was compelled to depute a full-time employee to service the increasing number of HP customers. “By 1995, the part-time business had grown to an extent where it could no longer be managed on an ad hoc basis. Hence, I took the decision to quit CMC and launch my own company,” says Moza. Thus was born RT Outsourcing Services.
“In 1995, the repair business was definitely a major pain-point for all vendors and yet it was an unorganized sector,” Moza reminisces. “Outsourcing was new to India then and vendors had apprehensions about our credibility as well as our ability to deliver on the strict parameters. But we managed to pull it off with a limited service team of five employees in north and five in south.”
Like any new set-up, RT outsourcing did face a capital crunch, but with Moza taking on the rest of the responsibilities including HR, accounts, administration and even service delivery, the company survived and thrived.
Moza credits vendors’ support as the reason the company remained afloat during the early years. Sounding altruistic, Moza offers, “For me, the motivational factor was the knowledge that I was creating job opportunities for people, especially those who would have otherwise found it difficult to get jobs.”
The progression
Over a period of 15 years, RT Outsourcing has evolved into an integrated post-sales solutions provider and reverse logistics provider, along with infrastructure management and project management services.
“Many of our old customers, who partnered with us 15 years ago, initially employed our services for repairs. Later they came back with business for call centre, went on to contracting installations and commissioning of projects and then maintenance services,” Moza says. “Our single window services model ensures that our customers can make use of all services seamlessly.”
For the year 2008-09, RT Outsourcing reported a turnover of Rs 110 crore compared to the 2007-08 turnover of Rs 75 crore.
Moza credits the company’s consistent growth to its smart diversification into new businesses. From IT the company has diversified into providing ASP and RMA services to mobile and telecom vendors. Today its clientele includes a healthy mix of leading IT players like HP, Netgear, Lenovo, Acer, Western Digital, AOC, ViewSonic and IBM, while its telecom business includes brands like Sony Ericsson, Hughes, NCR, UTstarcom, Micromax and Huawei.
“Our diversification strategy has helped us de-risk our business and utilize our capacities more profitability. It has also helped us constantly differentiate ourselves,” says Moza.
Last year the company diversified into the fledging base station commissioning and maintenance business for Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) in the telecom sector.
“Installing and maintaining telecom networks is a booming business as telcos are consolidating their tower infrastructure business and expanding them to rural areas. We have signed up with the leading equipment suppliers in this space and are now installing and commissioning over 2,000 sites every quarter,” informed Moza.
The company has also recently forayed in providing installation and maintenance services for security and surveillance equipment by signing up with Honeywell.
Early this year, RT was recommended for the ISO 27001 for security management. Claiming that the company is one of the first reverse logistics service providers to attain the premier certification, Moza adds, “The certification is for our data center to protect customer’s information, along with our internal information which gets shared during the course of services we provide.”
The company has set up a new training division called Tech@gurukul to provide training programs for in-house projects, customized training for corporate and specialized employability training for fresh engineering graduates.
“Already we have launched advanced training for base station installation and have trained 150 engineers. We currently have three training centers in Delhi, Jaipur, and Indore, and three are coming up in the West and East. Our aim for this year is to train 1,000 students on various technology certifications including security and surveillance,” informs Moza.
Key to success
Most of the vendors who started doing business with RT Outsourcing about 15 years ago are still their clients. “Our focus on quality processes, people and continuous skills enhancement are reasons why vendors continue to patronize us,” he says. “By successfully meeting their expectations, understanding pain points and delivering more than asked for, we continue to delight our customers.”
In addition to customer loyalty, according to Moza, what has given RT an edge is the implementation of Six Sigma.“Improved productivity and scale of operations has been the key to sustained growth. Implementing Six Sigma initiatives have ensured reduced wastages and better utilization of our current resources to effectively increase productivity.”
RT was the first company in the space to implement a web-enabled shop floor system for its refurbishment and repairing center, which Moza claims has helped the company provide industry-best total asset turnover (TAT) ratios and increased productivity by 20 percent.
Employee retention is the most important part of RT’s HR function. “People and skills are our strength and they have made our success possible,” says Moza. Host of programs are organized to boost employee morale like an annual festival Aagaman and RT Little Champ program. The HR also publishes a monthly newsletter RT Horizon. The recruitment process ‘Ek ka Dus’—an employee referral program— has increased employee retention.
The future
The slowdown in the IT spending has in fact come as a boon for the company. Industry consolidation and greater emphasis on outsourcing has seen RT Outsourcing win more business from new and existing vendors.
For the next fiscal, RT is planning to aggressively focus on the automation business, high-end networking and storage systems. The company plans to start new operations in Singapore, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
In addition, RT is eyeing the Defense segment and plans to venture into building management systems.
The ASP is on the look out for a private equity investor to raise funds that will be invested in setting up a global service center in Chennai, and expanding its Tech@Gurukul.
The company has plans to aggressively expand its network of franchised ASPs. “Our existing IT service franchisees are being trained on providing services in security surveillance. Thus we are creating more opportunities for our franchisees by helping them widen the scope of their business beyond providing IT post-sales support,” he says.
Moza is quite confident about the future of the company, “We will be a Rs 500 crore company providing services in IT and Telecom in Asia-Pacific region and for this we may even look at strategic acquisitions.”
Leisure time
“When I started off, the job was demanding. I was working around the clock, in the office for at least 16 to 18 hours daily. It wouldn’t have been possible without support from my family especially my wife,” says Moza. “I would like to give some time to them now.”
When he isn’t busy planning his next business move, Moza likes to read—especially books on management.
Showing his mentor side, he says, “Everybody has some potential, we should work to enhance the same and help him to overcome his weakness.”
As a parting shot, he says that he would like to be remembered as some one who has been of help to people and created leaders. |