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IT Copper into Business Calcium - Meet the Alchemist

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Abhigna
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JAIPUR, INDIA: He is the brain and heart behind Highbar Technologies, a spin-off of HCC that hatched with an interesting background score and grew up grooving to market pressures, something which is very unlike usual IT teams. What made Satish Pendse pick the raw, wild road when it forked? In fact, a better question is, did he create that rough trail at a place which others call a dead end made only for U-turns? Did he carve a new choice and pick up the tough, untarred zone? We ask and he unveils the lane as he saw, treaded and conquered in the last three years.

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A cost centre morphed into a business entity with an individual niche and balance-sheet. Before we get into the ‘how' of this feat, help us catch up on the ‘why'? Did you just get up one fine morning and decided to skydive into business skies?

It dates back as far as 2005-06 when we had just implemented an ERP, probably the first in the industry. That's when we gradually started noting during product evaluation and other phases that no one in the vendor list around has the domain knowledge of our specific industry. The feeling was iterated in implementation stages again. We were really frustrated that why our business issues are not being addressed and key challenges being ignored. We got to know the answer is same- lack of enough domain expertise. Incidentally, that was also a period of boom in economic sense, when the infrastructure industry was growing fast and we needed IT to support and fuel that growth. The situation we saw was beckoning us, a group with decades of heritage and a cutting edge appetite for technology.

We also gradually observed similar needs in other players and markets like Middle East. It was an entrepreneurial journey and we are glad we attacked that opportunity.

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Definitely not a kindergarten play, was it?

It was full of all kinds of challenges and concerns. We didn't know at the onset whether we would ever have sufficient business. The group wanted to ensure that IT support to them should not get sacrificed. But as we moved on, we developed a good model to address and balance all needs. It took us sometime to learn and test waters.

Did you face a typical entrepreneur's headaches?

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It was the case of an employee who turned into an entrepreneur. Life completely changed for sure. Apart from understanding finance, support etc, it called for learning about how sales works, and how customer understanding makes all the difference. Interacting and aligning with customer needs was an experience, specially because this customer was often my direct or indirect competition.

Now that couldn't get more thrilling. What is it like serving a business offering to people you usually compete with (your group competes with)?

In fact that did come up as a concern. Some companies are traditional rivals and these seven to eight firms are never going to be up for technology offerings like the ones we were mulling, and we knew that. But the next segment meant a big set of customers who had the mindsets and the appetite that we had guessed. It was all about positioning ourselves correctly. Our group is known for its processes and the experience-drilling that we could offer was inimitable. It meant a ready-made answer for these competitors.

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Does that not dilute your own competitive edge?

In our industry there are two things that matter competitively, and are meant to be top secrets - tender information and engineering factors, because both have direct and indirect implications for pricing. We knew that we were not going to touch those two parts. So then it became easier to position ourselves with something strong to offer. Internally, the argument made sense because we could help them see that if we don't do it, the need is so acute that sooner or later someone will come in and fill it, so why not take this chance. Market was anyways going to adapt and evolve. It took some time to get management's buy-in but it was not impossible. On the other side, we made people realize that talent-hopping had anyways made the industry replete with a lot of knowledge-transfer. The rival-part threat was only a perception. Soon externally companies realized that the substantial value of what we were going to offer was larger than the perceived competitive threat. From there on, things became less difficult.

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Accountability on delivery instead of an IT mandate - that must have been a sea change?

It is a big difference, for the whole IT team. Earlier it used to be just about a solution, but now we had to understand cash flows, had to solve problems with a definitive cost window and also get payments from customers. The final cheque matters (smiles).

All that must have entailed a lot of unlearning too. To get out of a CIO mind-box so to say?

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It has taught me so much. As CIOs we are indulged into a lot. I now recall those days when vendors used to wait to meet me. I have now seen days on the flip side in waiting for meetings with my clients. All it takes is a shift in perspective and how psychologically comfortable we are. We have to go risking the uncomfortable zone if we want to go beyond the cliché roles. You have to let go of the luxury of the world you know. You have to learn ratios, how balance-sheets work, how sales cycles operate and lot more. Rest will follow. Also, stop complaining that the CEO has no time for you. He never will unless you have a strong elevator pitch. It is up to you and your idea and those three minutes will extend into 30 and they again in turn can extend up to a patient three-hour window. But your idea and confidence should be strong enough.

How have the usual vendors reacted when you joined them in the market?

It is a competitive market for everyone. We have tried to explore co-optation as an option at many points and at other places we are open to competitive landscape.

What next?

Now we have started doing work on non-SAP platforms also apart from SAP implementations and entire forward as well backward integration suites. We also cover post-implementation parts, support and enhancements. Geographic expansion in regions like Middle East, Africa is attractive. Many new areas like toll management solution or suites for airports, ports etc would be apt extensions of what we do for the industry.