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Home> Executive Track> Portraits
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| Growing with a company |
| Narayan Rajan, CEO and founder of i-Vista Digital Solutions, is determined to make his company a leading player. |
| Priya Padmanabhan |
| Thursday, April 27, 2006 |
Untitled Document
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| :: Inside Out |
| Ambition : |
To be one of the top three players in the software product space. |
| What I would like to change about myself : |
Be more patient. |
| Hobbies : |
Golf, socializing and partying |
| Best moments : |
Getting married, every new customer I get |
| A must-have : |
cell phone |
| Worst fears : |
Not having money |
| Passionate about : |
Buidlng i-Vista as a brand and a company to reckon with |
| Favorite gizmo : |
Sony Vaio laptop and Nokia Communicator |
| Favorite destination : |
Florida, USA |
| Favorite Book : |
What they don't teach you at Harvard Business School |
| What ticks you off : |
Incompetence |
| A lesson for life : |
Don't give up. The easiest thing in the world is to give it up. It is tougher to fight it out. This builds character. |
| Motto : |
Treat people with respect |
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The dotcom bust in the beginning of the decade threw many ambitious
IT start-ups out of business. Some entrepreneurs just threw in the
towel and called it quits while a few who didn't give up but made
tough decisions to stay the course and persist. Narayan Rajan was one
among the latter.
Youth was on Rajan's side. He started his company i-Vista Digital
Solutions just after completing his BSc in Electronics from St
Joseph's College in Bangalore in 1996. He tasted tremendous success in
his business of building premium websites in the late 1990s. Starting
a business seemed a better option for Rajan who also toyed with the
idea of doing an MBA abroad. "But they asked for work experience,
which I did not have," says Rajan.
His seed capital of Rs 25,000 came from conducting Internet awareness
classes along with some of his friends. In the first year of
operations, the company raked in business worth Rs 3 lakh. By 2000, it
touched Rs 1 crore.
Encouraged by the heady start, he then decided to focus on projects and consulting work around web applications. And then the downturn happened. The 50-member team at
i-Vista was whittled down to 10. Retrenching people was not an easy decision but it had to be done. The temptation to pull the plug was there, but Rajan did not give up. The reason: "I didn't want to quit on a low but on a high."
The important change that Rajan affected following the meltdown was to shift from services to products. The company focused on solutions that could improve the internal business productivity (internal workflows) for customers.
"This is a gap that traditional enterprise applications don't cover," says
Rajan. He was content with domestic orders and did not venture abroad due to unviable economies of scale.
The company kept improving on its product line and today has a portfolio of solutions in the area of enterprise collaborative management. The company also offers outsource product development services.
However, Rajan hastens to add that the company's outlook on services is far removed from the headcount-heavy mega Indian service vendors. "We charge a higher rate and like to consider ourselves a boutique firm."
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The company is now cruising along comfortably having clocked an income of Rs 2.5 crore last year. Rajan is looking forward to notch up Rs 4.5 crore this fiscal. He is also gunning for the US market albeit in a low-key way. "One needs deep pockets to go to the US market. We want to do this through partnerships and events." Before making an American foray, he wants to go after under-served market opportunity in South East Asia and the Middle-East.
Rajan who has grown with the company right from its modest beginnings and trial by fire to steadying the course, dreams of having his company figure in the list of the top product companies globally. Given his determination and never-say-die attitude, he may well make this happen.
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