Makrand Rajadhyaksha & Sukrut Jobanputra, Founders, PM Dimensions, Mumbai

Projecting new paths, Scaling new frontiers

Heard about project management for tribal development? PM Dimensions, a project management & consultancy company founded by Makrand Rajadhyaksha and Sukrut Jobanputra does that along with managing projects for corporate bigwigs such as Mahindra and Godrej. They tell YourStory that every business brings new challenges and rewards.

Why an entrepreneur? When did you decide to go on your own? The first idea of business…

Makrand-I was working with Gartner, an IT research and consulting company, when I got an offer from a MNC bank to do project management for them. That’s how the whole journey began-in September 2006. They liked my work and that gave me lot of confidence to start something on my own. I shared my vision with Sukrut, a common friend and we soon got our company registered in India.

Something on starting years

Makrand- We tied-up with Business Management Consultants (BMC), a global project management training and consulting organisation, based in USA. That gave us good insight on best practices in project management around the globe. We also started getting business through existing clients of BMC. It took some time for clients to appreciate our unique planning and execution of projects, but that has become our identity now and we are getting project queries from both India and abroad.

Turning point in your business

Sukrut- Turning point had to do more with our company’s internal environment; in our minds rather than any external factor. We were constrained by our own thinking- you can say the mentality of a start-up company. Things like whether to hire a resource and invest money or not consumed our lot of time and energy. To compound our miseries, there were no references available in the market. We had to learn from our own mistakes. After almost one year of operations, in January 2008 precisely, we went back to drawing board and galvanized our activities to quicken the sales and scale-up the business. I guess that was a turning point in our business as we grew more confident in taking calculated risks. Now, if we invest a certain amount of money in a resource, we know how to monetise it.

Did at any point you felt like giving up and getting back to taking a regular job?

Never!

What drives you?

Makrand-In project management, every new assignment brings in new challenges and that motivates us. There is traction every 30days as we are taking project management to areas, which were unheard of in our business till now such as Govt PSUs, services etc. Our client list includes PSU giant Indian Oil Corporation, PVR cinemas-biggest multiplex chain in India, NGOs such as Apnalaya, Sarswati Mandir, corporate biggies such as Mahindra & Mahindra, Ranbaxy, and Godrej & Boyce, and Govt ministries such as Tribal Development Dept, Govt of Gujarat.

On business - the differentiators of your business

Sukrut- We have been lucky to identify people with complimentary skill sets, who have left their cushy jobs to work with us. We have made mistakes but learned faster. We also follow a top-down approach where we demonstrate the professionalism and expertise in smallest of operations.

Makrand- I would say it is to recognize the patterns in a successful business model and, replicate and customize it to the benefit of our clients. Our core competency verticals are:

• Banking and Financial Services
• Energy
• Information Technology
• Construction and Infrastructure
• Manufacturing
• Pharma and Biotech

Growth drivers / vision for your enterprise

We have 1000 days plan, which is divided into three growth stages further. Each stage will comprise of 300 days and anchored in a certain set of services of project management. As we mentioned earlier, it’s our endeavor to take project management to non-traditional areas and be a one stop solution, right from planning to execution of the project.