Vendors face Challenge if scalability Fails





Vendors face Challenge if scalability Fails Date: Sunday , August 05, 2012 Surjit Lahiri is the Vice President for Projects in the verticals of energy, semiconductor manufacturing and storage verticals at Mindteck. Mindteck is a global product engineering and IT solutions company that provides end-to-end services to a Global 2000 and public sector clientele, which is listed on Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE 517344). With over 10 years of experience in verticals such as Life Sciences, Smart Energy, Banking Financial Services and Insurance, Semiconductor and Public Sector Mindteck has helped many of the world’s top 2,000 companies with end-to-end technology services. They lay emphasis on solving business critical issues of clients through a blend of engineering capability and an analytical approach. With two decades of professional experience, Surjit comes from a very hardcore product engineering background. Under his leadership the company has expanded their growth into diverse areas such as home automation, smart energy and smart communication systems to name a few. Lahiri is in charge of enabling sales and to increase the competency level of the delivery organization for any new set of services. In a conversation with Surjit Lahiri, he shares his views on major factors that drive the trends in the industry. Trends in the Industry One of the major factors which influence the trend within the industry is the democratization of the tools which were earlier in the purview of large organizations. Only 20 percent of the data available can be used for analytics and data mining. The rest 80 percent exists in an unstructured format. Open source platforms like adobe for example democratize the tools of the production thus allowing clients to escape getting locked in with the traditional systems and hence facilitating large scale jobs. The network has evolved from wired, to wireless to currently low power wireless, which develops into a new type of ecosystem called a smartgrid and the technology derived from this field opens up the possibility of machine to machine communication. This empowers clients to finish their work within their budget and to deliver results way before the eleventh hour. Preparing customers who could not sell their products in the quantum to package their assets in a way by which they could access a larger client base is the method which is currently incorporated to increase the profits of the industry. Taking the hi-tech vertical as an example, the company visualizes it as four sectors i.e., computing, storage, network and devices. All these sectors have singly evolved into different assets of technology and the cost cutting aspects are actually the tools which help the industry to predict the future trends. Innovations In the current scenario the vendors' main target are the bigger markets. They face a big challenge as they do not have the capability to scale. For example, it poses a giant challenge for a small company to setup a lighting control for a whole city to the tune of 100,000 to 200,000 notes. The solution begins by a team who figure out the different possibilities on a white board. The unit within Mindteck together decides on an option which could eventually bring down the cost of the device to one-fourth of its original value. Using this method it is possible to attend to the requisites of the customers. Current priority The unit faces challenges to get a steady revenue growth and to stabilize enough funds internally. It is virtually analogous to running a mini organization within an organization; these situations are similar to the problems faced by an entrepreneur. The other challenge is to keep abreast with technology and to partner with the right firms as some of these partnerships require taking bets and huge financial risks. Our bets are placed in accordance with time trusted methodologies. The four sectors are then broken down in accordance to point of origination, applicability, the principles they follow and the individuals who align the technologies. The Mantra The will to succeed is simply driven by the company’s growing passion to become a larger and a better organization. This is noticeable as Mindteck is deep hand-in-hand with the customer and their businesses. The unit is like a guided missile so it is important to achieve targets against any hindrances. Roadmap Ahead The main strategy is to set up a private ecosystem of services and solutions. Semiconductors and product engineering is a fairly stable field. Mindteck is a seasoned unit in these two sectors, whereas smart energy is a relatively new division and it has been incubated as an amalgamation of multiple adjutancies that the organization possesses from a competency standpoint. Mindteck has been acquiring customers from the fields of utilities, OEM segments and from the commercial and institutional segments as well. The main goal is to grow on the existing set of customers and also cross sell by leveraging the relationships that have been established. The company has been successful with establishing connections in the U.S. and Europe. They have established special smartgride forums. Innovative technologies have been growing steadily even though there has not been much progress. Eventually clients are waking up and noticing the advantages of the unit's services. Moving forward, things are going to change very rapidly and it is an absolute necessity to keep change as a constant. The Indian market possesses huge potential for building energy reduction and energy conservation. But in the horizon, there are a lot of opportunities where Mindteck can play a formidable role based on the competencies and the experiences possessed in completing large scale projects worldwide. (As told to Vignesh A)