Mapping the future
Jayessh Mehta, Managing Director, Future Business Tech, takes us through his journey from being a dealer to a complete IT infrastructure provider
By Sharmee Roy
 Constantly reinventing our business model and staying ahead of the curve has been the key to success,” declares Jayessh Mehta, CMD of Bangalore-based Future Business Tech. From starting his own PC brand to reselling to his current business of providing end-to-end IT infrastructure, Mehta has seen sustained growth. Last fiscal, Future registered a turnover of Rs 62 crore, of which the hardware business contributed Rs 36 crore, the solutions business Rs 20 crore, while services and software licensing contributed Rs 3 crore each.
Early decision
Moving away from the family business of construction, Mehta decided to venture into IT. He reminisces, “While I was doing my engineering in Bangalore, I realized that I wanted to get into the IT business. In 1984, as soon as I finished my studies, I jumped into an electronic components business with a relative.”
This business however did not last long, so in 1990 Mehta decided to start out on his own with Future Computers. With a seed capital of Rs 1 lakh, he introduced his own PC brand, Datapower, but this business soon became unviable. He discontinued the brand and became a dealer for Godrej Office Automation to push dot matrix printers. “In 1993, we were able to boost our product portfolio because Godrej started marketing products of various vendors such as HP and Panasonic.”
By 1995, Mehta began thinking of moving out of the reselling business and going direct to the customer. The turning point came when Future bagged a large order from Siemens for workstations. “This order gave us the opportunity as well as the confidence to go ahead with our plans. That was also the time when most distributors were offering products directly to the reseller instead of going through us, hence we did not see any future in continuing with it,” explains Mehta. However, this transition wasn’t completed till 1998. On the growth path
Since 2002, Future has seen a 30 percent CAGR, which has been fuelled by its increasing focus on e-governance projects.
A project done for the Madhya Pradesh government marked its entry into the government segment. The project was undertaken in 2002, wherein they deployed 2,000 PCs at 600 sites.
After this, Future was successful in getting another major e-governance project. Called Nemmadi, this was a rural telecenter project for the Karnataka government. The goal of this project was to create virtual offices of the state government in all its villages. “We were involved in the setting up of 800 kiosks across Karnataka. Each kiosk was worth Rs 1.25 lakh, and the entire project cost was around Rs 14 crore,” reveals Mehta. Each kiosk consisted of two PCs, a dot matrix printer, a laser printer, a web cam, a scanner, and a UPS. Future has finished the hardware deployment, and is now involved in maintaining it.
For the last one year the company has also been focusing on virtualization. A VMware enterprise partner, Mehta said that virtualization has also been a key component in seven major projects taken up. “The conversion rate of our customers to virtualization projects has been 30 percent.” A PoC makes a difference
To break away from its hardware-centric business model, Future is looking to make services count in the long run. Mehta’s aim is to make it contribute up to 30 percent of its turnover by 2010.
The first step in this direction was the setting-up of a Proof of Concept (PoC) in 2007, which focuses on server and storage virtualization, as well as remote management. The center is targeted at those SMB customers who do not have a proper IT team, or are not in a position to take care of the maintenance.
“The PoC has been a key differentiator for us, and the basis of selling right now. With our PoC, the hit ratio has been 100 percent. A typical SMB customer can understand the applications or solutions requirements that we talk about because they are able to relate to our environment of 50 PCs,” he explains.
The center is based on the concept of a datacenter-in-a-rack, and an investment of close to Rs 80 lakh was made for it. Of this, Mehta’s individual investment was Rs 40 lakh, while the rest of the money was provided by vendors.
The PoC has a complete virtualized storage array, upgradable to 96TB, which is supporting the infrastructure. It also houses identity-driven management and Cisco Callmanager Express with IP telephony. Additionally, it facilitates video conferencing on IP to the branches. Future has also deployed two servers and virtualized them for eight virtual servers. Innovating for the future
Following the lines of software as a service (SaaS), the solution provider plans to get into hardware as a service (HaaS). This whole model will work on the lines of operational expenditure with well-defined SLAs.
“We will ask customers about their expectations from the IT infrastructure. Based on this, we will plan-deploy-manage the IT infrastructure for them. Not only this, we will also provide them with operating expenditure to put the IT infrastructure in place. In return, we will charge them on a use-and-pay basis,” he informs.
To go ahead with the plan, Future is tying up with financial institutions. It has been able to get the backing of GE Finance and HP Financial Services. “These projects will have to be in the range of Rs 1 crore. We will go to them with a complete business proposal, and if they like this the customers will be provided with the necessary funds,” he explains. In the initial phase, the company will be looking at the manufacturing segment. People management
With 150 employees, Future was constantly facing manpower challenges till it decided to tackle the problem by coming up with an in-house training center. Through this center the company upgrades the skills of its employees on an ongoing basis.
“This is a proper, dedicated training center within our organization. Here, we provide training not only in terms of technology but also in soft skills. Further, we have principals coming down to our office to impart exclusive training to our team,” Mehta states.
Riding on his philosophy that no employee should work in one department for more than a year, Mehta constantly gives opportunities to his employees to move up the ladder and enhance their skill-sets.
“We are very focused on training. We ensure that an employee upgrades and moves up every year as this guarantees our growth. For instance, when we hire service engineers—such as desktop engineers or field engineers—we make it clear that they cannot stay for more than a year in a particular department. They have to upgrade and move up depending on their capabilities. Everybody has to be certified in their respective fields. We have something called product champs, they get certified by a particular vendor in a product category. This way people get to move from field to support. Then they can move to the level of product champ and later, can become business managers for us,” explains Mehta. Next on the agenda
In terms of expansion, Future will be increasing its national footprint with new branches. The target will be to cover the entire southern market with branches in Hyderabad and Kochi, which is expected to happen by 2010. After this the company will look north with branches in Ahmedabad and Delhi.
At present, Future has branches in Mumbai, Chennai and Pune. “In these locations we have not really opened our own offices, but have instead collaborated with smaller partners and worked with them to develop new markets and customers,” he discloses. Mehta will be looking to build his other branches on a similar concept.
The company is also looking at a push that will take it to the Rs 100 crore mark. For this, it is considering acquisitions and mergers by 2010 once the proposed branches become functional. According to Mehta, these acquisitions would be more in the space of network audits. The man behind it all
The success of Mehta’s business is linked to his inner peace, and this, in turn, comes from his spiritual leanings. He attends meditation camps on a regular basis, and is a follower of Shri Rakeshbha, his spiritual guru. He also visits the Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram in Dharampur once every quarter. “When in the ashram, I prefer to disconnect with the outside world. I do not carry a mobile or any other communication device there,” he makes it clear.
In keeping with his spiritual side, his music consists only of bhajans. Simplicity attracts him, and that’s how Azim Premji caught his attention when he met him at a Wipro event. “I found him completely down-to-earth and simple. To put it in a few words, he is simply great,” Mehta says with a smile.
Besides spirituality what? Cricket is something he enjoys. His company has its own cricket team, of which Mehta is a member, and he is going to participate in a tournament to be organized by Microsoft. |