Role Model
The Silent Performer
Called the silent performer by his peers, Progressive’s Founder Managing Director Prateek Garg is single-mindedly focused on making his company best in class
By Dhaval Valia
 For Prateek Garg, the founder-MD of Progressive Infotech, life has been almost like a wheel of fortune. But despite the many twists and turns encountered, he has created an organization that is not only successful but also respected for its quality of management, technological capabilities and pioneering business initiatives.
Born in Dehradun to a prosperous family having a brass manufacturing business, Garg’s first change of fortune happened when he started his engineering course in electronics and telecom at REC Kurukshetra. The family business encountered turbulent times, leaving Garg to partly fund his own education through a scholarship. He topped in his field, and was picked up by HCL in 1985 for its customer support division.
During his six years at HCL, Garg rose from being a customer support engineer to being a member of the core tech support group responsible for the company’s product engineering, testing and technical support management. He was also part of the team that set up HCL’s US operations (now HCL Technologies). This eventually became the biggest turning point in Garg’s life—it inspired him to become an entrepreneur. Recalls Garg, “Working to set up HCL’s operations in America gave me unmatched exposure and confidence that I could run a company. So then why not my own, I wondered.”
This set the ball rolling, and with a bunch of HCL colleagues he founded a company called IT&T in 1990 with a focus on third-party maintenance, resale of IT products and facility management services.
“IT&T was the first company in India that promoted the concept of facility management. We managed the IT facilities of some of the largest private and public sector companies. In a short time, we also became one of the largest resellers of Digital and Compaq,” states Garg.
However, in 1998, due to serious differences with the other founding directors of IT&T, Garg exited the company to start all over again.
The progression
That’s how Progressive Infotech came into being, with Rs 5 lakh in seed capital and 10 staff members in a small office in Connaught Place, Delhi. “With the prominence of IT growing around the world, it was to be expected that managing infrastructure would become the single biggest IT challenge for organizations—and therefore the single biggest opportunity for a solution provider like us,” recalls Garg.
Then, just when his new business ideas were finding acceptance, his wheel of fortune spun again. Following the dotcom bust in 2000, Garg went through the hardest times of his life, booking his first-ever loss as a businessman. But “tough times are often the best times because they teach you things that would otherwise take you a lifetime to learn,” the man philosophizes. “What it taught us was the value of money, the cost of poor quality, and the importance of strong customer-orientation. Since then, cost management, customer focus and quality compliance have become the three pillars of our being.”
Using these learnings, Garg put a vision document in place for the company, plus a 3-year business plan backed by a well-thought-out execution strategy. “The difficult phase we went through also gave me my core management team. While many left the boat in the middle of the storm, those who stuck around are today part of our core management team,” Garg informs.
The quality consciousness imbibed by the company during that period made it one of the few channel companies that can boast of a long list of certifications including ISO 9001, ISO 20000 for infrastructure services management, ISO 27001 for information security management, and the PCMM Level 2 compliance for HR processes and excellence. The company recently won the HR Excellence Award from the Amity Foundation. Progressive is now well on its way to achieving PCMM Level 3 certification.
Garg’s insistence on quality processes has also led the company to automate its operations using ERP, CRM and integrated service management systems. Little wonder then that the company has grown at an impressive rate. From a topline of Rs 20 crore in FY2002-03, Progressive is confident of closing FY2008-09 with a turnover of Rs 210 crore. Meanwhile, its HR strength has grown from 150 people to 800 during the period, and the company now has a footprint in 80 cities.
Business mix
Progressive’s internal organization is modeled around the company’s core philosophy of value creation for customers. “Our aim is to help customers meet their business objectives with the help of IT, hence we straddle the entire value chain from design through deployment to management of IT infrastructure,” explains Garg. Identified by Frost & Sullivan as a company with the best integrated infrastructure management capabilities in the domestic market, services form 20 percent of Progressive’s revenues; the remaining comes from systems integration.
Its services portfolio includes a range of infrastructure management services—remote and onsite—and professional services. The 40-member professional services team include solutions architects and implementers provide assistance in the design and deployment of technology stacks for customer projects and also for vendors.
Progressive has a state-of-the-art 50-seat NOC facility with HP Openview technology as the core engine to provide remote infrastructure services to Indian and international clients.
On the systems integration side, Progressive has had major wins over the last 12 months in the government, PSU, manufacturing, telecom, BFSI, IT and ITeS verticals.
One of the largest projects currently being executed by Progressive is the computerization of the branches of Punjab National Bank, and the management of their IT infrastructure over a 5-year period. Another project that the company is working on, in partnership with HP, is eCourts, an initiative by the Indian government to automate and digitize courts across the country. In the first phase of this project, Progressive has armed nearly 15,000 judges with notebooks and computer tools. In the soon-to-begin second phase it will work towards automating and digitizing the various components of the vast judicial system.
Progressive’s strengths in the data center and virtualization space have helped it counter the effects of the slowdown. “Despite the slowdown in the second half of the year we will post a growth of over 50 percent in the current fiscal, taking our turnover from Rs 158 crore to Rs 210 crore,” declares Garg.
Future is progressive
Garg believes that Progressive has miles to go to deliver on his long-term vision. Over the next five years, he wants Progressive to grow to become a Rs 1,000 crore company with a global footprint.
Expanding the global footprint through acquisitions and partnerships is an integral part of the strategy. “Last year we opened a subsidiary in Dubai, and have already started pitching for large systems integration and IMS projects in the Middle-East and North Africa. We plan to make an acquisition in the US to bolster our IMS play there which will be supported by our NOC in India. The acquisition will help us provide customer interface and onsite services capabilities,” he informs, adding, “We are also looking for a strategic partner who will invest capital, provide us with wider access to global markets, and bring in management and technology expertise.”
Despite the economic uncertainties, Garg is confident of 20 percent growth in the next fiscal.
Garg’s foresight may help Progressive counter the slowdown better than its peers. “As early as 2007, we spotted trends suggesting a disruption of the global economy. Wild prices of commodities and the credit crises in the US provided ample clues that a steep slowdown was around the corner, and hence we started tightening the belt in anticipation.”
Family and books
A self-proclaimed workaholic, Garg is described as a ‘silent performer’ by his peers and vendors. The fact that he prefers to remain low-profile and doesn’t attend many vendor events gives him the image of being ‘silent,’ while the phenomenal growth and success of his company accounts for the ‘performer’ tag. “I don’t attend many events, and you will not find me partying much at the events I attend. Even the vendor meetings I have are during office hours—never over a drink. I would rather be with my family or catch up on my reading.”
He has a vast library of books on business management and philosophy. One of his all-time favorites is Good To Great by Jim Collins. He considers Airtel Chairman, Sunil Mittal, as his role model. Ask him why and Garg replies, “Apart from creating India’s largest telecom company after starting out small, what is notable is Mittal’s focus on value creation for all the stakeholders of Bharti. And don’t forget the value system and corporate governance he has instilled in the company.”
Garg believes that with proper planning, 80 percent of the battle is won. “If you plan well, you can execute well. At Progressive, we have evolved a strong culture of planning. To make the planning process more effective, we have on our Board of Directors people who are independent and bring diverse expertise to the table.”
Extremely self-critical of his own self, Garg is never comfortable with the status quo. He is always striving for newer challenges, and raising the benchmarks. “Often, sitting in the corner office makes you oblivious of what’s happening around you, and this leads to complacency,” he points out. “The only way to constantly upgrade and evolve is to keep yourself abreast of changing customer expectations, employee expectations, and new business models.”
For Garg the ultimate goal is to leave behind a company that has a sustainable business model, great leadership and best corporate governance. Amen! |