NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Startup 11: Ajay Mian, CEO, All e Technologies
Saturday April 10, 2010 , 6 min Read
An academician-turned-entrepreneur, Dr. Ajay Mian has been with IT industry for over 20 years. He spent the first few years of the career were spent working with leading IT organizations in India and abroad, including Tata Burroughs and Unisys. Having a penchant for “creation,” Dr. Mian has participated in setting up of three IT ventures over the past 15 years. For the past 10 years, he has been the CEO of All e Technologies, a company known for its competence in providing “business solutions” to the SME segment.
Dr. Mian holds a Ph.D. in physics and for about 3 years prior to moving to the industry, he served as faculty at the University of Delhi, teaching physics and computer science to graduate and postgraduate students.
All e Technologies (Alletec) is a leading provider of business solutions to growth companies. streamlining and automating core business processes with “product-based” solutions, developing “custom built” solutions for client-specific applications and providing IT services for all stages of software development and maintenance, Alletec is committed to “helping clients succeed through innovative business solutions.”
Operating in India for almost 10 years now, the company has built a substantial client base and earned the reputation of a 100% success with enterprise solutions projects. Recipient of multiple laurels and awards, Alletec is today Microsoft’s largest ERP solution provider. A large percentage of the largest Microsoft Dynamics customers trust Alletec for the implementation and support of their mission-critical business systems. Some of these include Asian Paints, Blue Dart, Cipla, MakeMyTrip, Naukari, Caparo, Yatra, and BL Kashyap. Alletec has also been making substantial contributions to Dynamics NAV product development.
Alletec has experienced robust growth over the past few years. Realizing that marketing and innovation are the two critical elements to any growth story, the company has been making substantial investments to both. The sales and marketing engines has grown multifold over the past year, with Mumbai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad being added as new locations. InstaNAV (powered by Microsoft Dynamics NAV), the result of Alletec’s ground breaking effort to evolve an ERP for the Lower Mid Market (LMM) segment of the industry, could be a game changer.
Dr. Mian is a successful entrepreneur after he left academics in favor of creating companies. His three ventures stand testimony to his tremendous execution skills and the success of Alletech could be attributed to his leadership. Without waiting further, please hear what he has to say on entrepreneurship to Indian Startup NASSCOM EMERGEOUT initiative.
1. Why did you take up entrepreneurship journey?
Dr. Ajay Mian: I believe in the saying that the only things you regret in life are the risks you did not take. Ironically, the most compelling motivation for turning an entrepreneur from an academician was not wealth creation. It was “living” leadership. If I didn’t turn an entrepreneur, I might have been in public life.
2. What keeps you going (how and where do you find your motivation levels)?
Dr. Ajay Mian: Alletec has a leadership position in providing business solutions to mid-sized businesses. With a mission of “Helping Clients Succeed through Innovative Business Solutions,” Alletec has brought smiles to the faces of over 125 CEOs in the last few years. Delight of our customers is the biggest motivation for us to keep going on. Maintaining and further strengthening our leadership position in this area is absolutely critical for us.
3. What is your advice to wannabe entrepreneurs in India?
Dr. Ajay Mian: Strategies, plan, dare, and remember cash is important. Another important advice: build an advisory board as soon as possible in your journey.
4. What success means to you and your organization?
Dr. Ajay Mian: Just a proof of the hypothesis we made years ago: “We Can, We Will” and raising the bar constantly.
5. What are your learnings from the failures?
Dr. Ajay Mian: Building sales DNA in the organization is at least as important as innovation and service commitment.
Dr. Mian attributes Alletech’s success to its mission and finally says sales is as important as innovation and service. Bringing “life” to a technology (Microsoft Dynamics) and succeeding needs tremendous capacity and ability to foresee customer needs. Dr. Mian has proved that such a success is possible through well-thought out execution.
As part of the Indian startup NASSCOM EMERGEOUT initiative, 10 entrepreneurs have shared their views. To know what they are, please visit the links given below.
1. Kishore Mandyam of PK4 Software
3. Ajay Sharma of Shristi Software
4. Pallav Nadhani of InfoSoft Global (FusionCharts)
5. Manoj Srivatsava of Hanu Software
7. Sushil Chaudary of Mann-India
9. R. Swaminathan of Matrix Business Solution
10. Suresh Sambandam of OrangeScape
NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Conclave, Chennai, April 30, 2010
NASSCOM EMERGEOUT conclave comes to Chennai on 30 April 2010. With “Nurturing the IT DNA in India’s growth sectors” as its theme, the conclave focuses on sectors that hold relevance to Chennai such as the automotive sector, in addition to opportunities that exist in the UID space, and workshops on marketing, product design, and many others.
Mr. Bharat Goenka, founder, Tally Software is the keynote speaker. It is a no-brainer right now that if you walk to anyone and ask them to cite you an example of an Indian product, Tally ranks among the top list, and it has been that way for a while. Mr. Goenka is without doubt one of the most prolific icons of the Indian product software industry. Talk to him about product positioning, understanding user behaviour, pricing, marketing and building a brand that is as big as Microsoft in terms of training and development centers, and you are sure to walk away in awe. Would you miss hearing him?
To wrap up the conclave, Mr. Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice Chairman, Cognizant, is going to engage in rather inquisitive conversation with Prasanto Roy from CyberMedia. He has been a technology industry leader for over 30 years. As a founding member of Cognizant, he was been responsible for the company’s high-touch customer relationship and delivery excellence model. Under his leadership, Cognizant became the youngest IT services company to reach the $1 billion revenue milestone. He is also the part of NASSCOM Chairmen Council and under his leadership, some new initiatives in the EMERGE Forum were started.
To find the speaker list, please visit http://bit.ly/dvMYqq.
Please register for the conference here.