Role Model
Eternally entrepreneurial
 Saurin Shah, Managing Director, Ashtech Infotech talks about the slowdown and how it has reinvigorated him to plan his next big venture
By Trupti Ramball
Glass is always half full and never half empty according to Saurin Shah, Managing Director of Mumbai-based system integrator (SI), Ashtech Infotech. He calls the recession a blessing in disguise.
“We are 7-8 months away from a full recovery, but the downturn has helped us in pruning away the deadwood.”
This is not the first time Ashtech has had to transform itself. In the past it has done it several times with great success. Shah says, “Challenges are part and parcel of business, its how you counter them and emerge a winner that matters.”
The beginning
Shah has seen several ups and downs in his 25-year journey as an IT entrepreneur. Born with a silver spoon, Shah decided to join IT because he didn’t want to toe the safe line. “After my graduation in 1979, I joined our family textile business. However, within a couple of years I got bored and decided to start something of my own.”
IT was his calling. “IT seemed like an interesting industry as many software companies like Infosys and Mastek were just surfacing. Although at that time most did the low-value data entry job, there was a certain buzz around computers. So I joined NIIT to do software courses.”
In 1982, after a successful completion of the NIIT course, he took up a job at Computrade Financial Services—an offshoot of JM Financials—and that is where he met Hiten Patel who had the same entrepreneurial zeal as him. Together with Patel, in 1984, Shah started a software company, Patel and Shah Associates. Soon the company launched its first accounting package Mehtaji followed by Swift and Enterprise. “Some of our first clients included Diners Club and Wyeth,” recalls Shah.
Patel and Shah Associates soon got its third pillar, Arun Saxena in 1987 following which Ashtech Systems and Services, a third-party maintenance company, came into existence. The turning point came in 1988, when Ashtech Systems and Services tied up with TVSE to market their dot matrix printers. It was especially tough considering that the market was swamped with imported Epson printers. “The first year was slow, but from 1989 to 1994, we swept the Mumbai market with TVSE products. We won the best TVSE dealer award for five consecutive years,” he reminiscences.
Though the going was good, the trio soon disbanded. In November 1993, following the reshuffle in the management, Ashtech Infotech was formed. The company shifted its focus to reselling business products of Compaq, Digital, HP, and Cisco. “HP was our main vendor. We had already established a relationship with them so it was easy to form further association,” he says.
From 1995 onwards, Ashtech began adding more products to its portfolio, aligning with vendors such as IBM, Veritas, Microsoft, Oracle, Avaya, and Sun and this marked its transformation into a system integration company. “What distinguishes us from the competition is our complete offering. We guide our clients through the entire IT life cycle—planning, readiness, implementation, and operations,” offers Shah.
Current business
FY2009-10 was a challenging year for Ashtech as it saw its topline shrink by almost 35 percent from Rs 110 crore in FY2008-09 to Rs 70 crore. Explains Shah: “Our main clientele are financial companies, who were severely impacted during the downturn. Hence, several large contracts were deferred. It had an impact on our revenues.”
About 85 percent of Ashtech’s revenue comes from its solutions business while services contribute 15 percent.
Shah regards customer-centricity as the USP of his company “Most companies, our size, are vendor-centric and work with a single vendor in each tech domain. But we give what customers want, and what is best for them.”
Over the last three years, the company has turned its focus on providing complex technology solutions with a strong consulting component that Shah says only a few of his SI peers in the country have the skill-sets to provide. Last year, it implemented a large project worth Rs 3 crore for a leading manufacturer which wanted to enhance the performance of its ERP system by 2x. “It was the first such project for us. But being confident of our ability, we did a PoC in the actual environment with a guarantee to refund the full money in case the solution didn’t work.”
The company then analyzed the ERP system and the reasons for its sluggishness, and provided a solution that gave a 3-times boost to OLTP and 10-times improvement in batch processing without the customer having to invest in any new platform.
It also executed a project worth Rs 2.1 crore from a leading co-operative bank. It provided the entire technology infrastructure for the deployment of a core banking solution. The customer had a distributed infrastructure on the Windows platform without interconnectivity between branches and the headquarters. Ashtech deployed a Unix platform for the database, a Windows-based applications server, scalable storage with automated back-up and recovery, a WAN network, and power backup solutions for the data center.
The SI also undertook Rs 2.1 crore-project for an entrant telecom service provider. “We helped the telecom service provider compute and deploy storage infrastructure for its customer care department,” he offers.
With a focus on consulting and new services, Ashtech floated a new arm called Ash Consulting last year. It also undertook an organization-wide retraining program. “It was important to appraise our entire employee base about how services are key to future growth, and more importantly, how it fits into the big picture of our customers’ corporate goals,” informs Shah.
Headed by Shah’s daughter Aashni, the company provides infrastructure, network, security, disaster recovery and business continuity, and storage, server and backup consolidation consulting. “We have bagged five projects for this new subsidiary. It has enhanced our brand image and has the potential to contribute big to our business.”
Among the new verticals that Ashtech targeted last year was the hospitality sector. “We introduced Ping Wireless, infrastructure management using HSIA (high speed internet), in several hotels and commercial complexes in and around Mumbai. We completely automate all their IT needs including security, storage and car parking. Some of our main clients include Hotel Shangrila and Naman Midtown commercial complex.”
Next, the company is looking at the real estate and infrastructure verticals to expand.
Prime on Ashtech’s future agenda is automated managed service. The company has already made an investment in a network operations center (NOC) in Mumbai. It has purchased licenses from Kaseya India. “In another 6-months time, we plan to manage about 10,000 nodes in the country,” says Shah.
“The IT buying trends have shifted from Capex to Opex. Till the time the trends shift back, it is imperative that SIs like us focus more on service. Hence, the major thrust of our business is going to be on consulting and RIMS,” he offers.
Team talk
A total of 36 out of the 200 employees are vendor-certified in Solaris, Cisco, HP, IBM, Citrix, Windows, Veritas, Oracle/ SQL Database. Owing to recession, Ashtech had to take a tough call and engage in heavy cost-cutting. “We had to let several people go. But that helped us assess our capabilities and aligning our employees to our goals,” he offers.
A successful business is a result of good leadership and no one knows it better than Shah. With a foresight, Shah has appointed Vinod Menon as the Director, Technology, and B Shankar as the Director. “They have been the pillar of Ashtech’s growth and I felt that they have as much stake in the company’s success as I do,” he avers.
Menon drives the technology initiatives and is responsible for the enterprise solutions business, consulting services and customer support operations. Shankar meanwhile leads Ashtech’s sales team across India. “Both Vinod and Shankar handle the daily operations, leaving me free to concentrate on further business development.”
Getting personal
In his bid to help uplift the underprivileged, Shah supports various noble causes. A former President of Rotary Club of Mumbai Queen’s Necklace division, he has also been working towards the betterment of the Indian Entrepreneurial Community. A founder President of Trade Association of Information Technology (TAIT), he has been The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Mumbai Chapter’s Board Director and a committee member of Indian Merchant Chambers (IMC), Technology Wing.
He is married to Zarna, a physiotherapist, and has two daughters. “After completing her engineering and business studies and a two-year stint at Deloitte in US, my eldest daughter Aashina is back at home. She is in charge of Ash Consulting. I couldn’t be more proud.”
As Shah continues his love affair with IT, he signs off saying, “The last two years of slowdown has been a boon as it has reinvigorated my entrepreneurial instincts. I have been extensively meeting customers, technologists and analysts to understand the future of IT solutions so that we can prepare Ashtech to take the next big leap.” |