#LeaderTalk: In Conversation with Mr.Kumar Bachchan Co-founder and COO, Niveshan Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.
1. You’ve had a phenomenal run so far – 2.5 times growth in Year 2 itself. Please tell us what worked well and things you may have wanted to turn out better. A deep-down on your strategy, please.
Today’s market is very tough and differently competitive, even before COVID. There are too many players, new players keep emerging, and existing players going out of business. The good news is, technology-led disruptions are changing stakeholder’s requirements & expectations with changing times; the market is growing and expanding. New solutions are emerging.
In such a scenario, FOCUS is among the single most differentiators. Market opportunities look quite lucrative with lots of pull factors. One of the major factors with Focus at top of the agenda, is ‘art of saying NO’ or being ‘selective’. It is easier said than done, but a timely call makes or break.
Focus helps channelize all energies and resources with concentration on select opportunities. It gets strengthened by selection of right customer and correct projects. We believe-in ‘NextGen Niveshan’, i.e. Be Future Proof,
All the Times in Everything We Do
During COVID, we could work upon and close a very large & strategic, cross-Nation, and 100% faceless sales engagement for Niveshan. Shortly, we shall share the surprise.
Strategically working with forward and backward supply chain partners has paid-off well. For more than one reasons, working with partners has helped enhance the market addressability, building capability, capacity, and credentials.
Let me make a special mention here, we have focused on building large & strategic engagements to sustain our growth during these two years. We do see, great times, fun times for us going forward.
We believe-in “Continuous Innovation and Investments in Customer Focus, Human Capital, Operational Excellence, and Trusted Partnerships.”
Now is the time for us to focus on organisation-wide growth from medium to long term perspective. Being a new company, we have extensively invested on building & rolling out internal processes and procedures to achieve & support Scale.
We are quite pleased and happy with our brief journey so far, esp. the kind of tractions we have been able to achieve in such tough competitive market situation. To reiterate, Focus is paying-off well.
2. Please tell us about your experience during lockdown – how did you address customers’ needs and keep your employees motivated? Has productivity remained the same?
COVID and Lockdown, something no one had ever envisaged at such a scale and pace it has happened. It brought the entire World to its knees, as it is called bigger, deeper, & wider than any World War III could have done. It would be fair to say, considering our socio-economic-geo-political scenario in India, we have managed well so far for more than one reasons. Lockdown certainly did help by bringing people to standstill to build Nation-wide capacity to deal with any emergencies, educate people, and other factors. For Country like India, it was like unimaginable; however, we have dealt with it well as a Nation.
One observation we would certainly like to mention about ‘Productivity’. We have observed much higher productivity achievements during lockdown, possibly for two key reasons (a) Big NO happened to all unproductive activities like commuting & travel, and (b) counter-productive activities like internal 1:1 or group extended meeting or courtesy-sake external meetings for more than one reasons. Very clearly, nothing stopped and we repeat nothing stopped on account of no in-person meetings. Rather most e-meetings were focused, more productive, and completed on-time.
I would like to revisit our single most differentiator, i.e. Focus. Initially, we have focused on few opportunities among select customers. Hence, we didn’t have to spread ourselves too thin right from deployment of resources through collecting our monies. I must take this opportunity to extend our sincere thanks to our customers and partners for their support.
Our nature of projects did help us in going through the motions with lesser bumps. We were working on some of the projects, which were very strategic to our customers. This was among other most critical success factors that helped us stay committed in line with customer criticality. We would like to place appreciation for our teams to align with Customer’s project priorities and Company’s focus.
We were relatively quick to put our act together to work on our resources, including People. It may surprise few, we did hire and on-boarded people during this period across levels and across discipline. To me, this certainly conveyed a solid message to our people that ‘All is Well’; so our people didn’t have to worry or panic. We didn’t touch the fundamentals of employee engagement program, including compensation. We extensively invested in training and orientation programme for our people across levels.
People are the biggest assets in Service Industry; if people feel safe & secure and motivated, then you are pretty much home. Productivity needs to be seen in relative and larger context, and it addresses the issue quite simply.
3.Please tell us about the future of Cloud Computing in a Post-COVID world – some of the major trends that you are seeing already.
Among Emerging Technologies or Industry 4.0 discussions, Cloud has become BAU (Business As usual). As I see, cloud or no cloud debate has settled quite well for a while by now. In one perspective, majority of end-user’s activities can be carried out remotely irrespective of its backend infrastructure deployment. However, Cloud technologies and deployment further optimizes & addresses the challenge of managing critical infrastructure.
Somewhere, certainly Cloud deployment has drawn further attention and traction for more than one reasons. One among others, users need to pay ‘as you use’. Lower economic activity results in lesser payments. Organisations to feel more secure and comfortable about their infrastructure been maintained & delivered per SLAs (Service Level Agreements) without disruptions and much dependencies. Last but not the least, Cloud technologies continue to mature and portfolio & services are expanding. Users have more choices than ever with enhanced features & technology at much better price-point.
Cloud shall see more traction and adoption, that shall further yield ‘Advantage Customer’.
4.How are SMBs adopting Cloud Technology – anything distinct about them? What are some of their major concerns and how are you addressing them?
Cloud and SMBs are like ‘Made for Each Other’. Simply put it, challenges of SMB are exactly the value proposition of Cloud. We do have a very interesting internal paper to this effect.
I must acknowledge, Government has done a good work by launching Meghdoot, India Cloud Policy and Empanelment of CSP (Cloud Service Providers).
SMBs certainly had perceived fear about dealing with a new phenomenon and biggies (CSP) of the World. Government intervention has helped addressing the challenge to a large extent and better adoption.
SMB’s typical concerns are like exit options, portability across CSP – if they decide so, proper billing & costing, … This is best explained by one CSP over others during business acquisition process by them. Further, I must acknowledge bodies like NASSCOM are doing a wonderful roleplay by continually bringing demand & supply side together with critical stakeholders like Government, Academia, … on same page.
5.You serve several verticals – BFSI, Communication, Energy & Utilities, Govt. Education. Can you please do a deep-dive on these sectors in the next 9 – 12 months. How will they fare?
As I mentioned, we are a young and emerging player. We are studying our options and sharpen our focus. To reiterate, we will be quite careful in choosing our options. Every time Industry faces rough or tough time because of one or other reasons, somehow focus and investments in Digital footprint is quite natural. It may not be wrong to say, Digital Strategy and/or Digital Transformation may remain among the last hopes of survival. Digital Investments, if done wisely, can deliver multi-fold results including new business model.
Most of the sectors named above are key to any Nation, India is no exception. Education and Healthcare would certainly be among the sectors, expected to undergo major transformation. COVID has certainly put these two sectors to test and opened up new challenges & opportunities. Core sectors like BFSI, Energy & Utilities, and others would continue to attract investments in Digital footprint, more so to deliver agility and operational excellence as never before. Surely, Communication & Telecom will be one sector to watch in India around some of the developments being seen.
COVID has actually proved, anyone who had matured Digital Strategy and Implementation saw minimal disruption, including Government services.
Government will continue to be recession-proof for still longer times to come.