I want to be recognized as the most honest and fair person

Some might call it luck, some destiny but Nitin Shah firmly believes that it
was his thirst for technology that helped him carve a name for himself and make
his mark as one of the front runners in the IT industry. Shah reveals some of
his treasured moments from his journey to Minakshi Shetty

In the recently concluded DQ Channels Excellence Awards, Allied Digital
created history of sorts by walking away with four trophies in a single year.
The company bagged the award for Fastest Growing SP because it registered a
growth of around 87 percent in 2008-09, up from Rs 297 crore the previous
fiscal. This was the first time in the six-year award history that Allied was
considered for the award, primarily because its main growth came in the form of
inorganic acquisitions, which clinched the deal for it. The company also bagged
the Gold award for the 'Most Successful SP', which is given to a company which
is successful across all categories. To win the award the company has to have
low dependency on the founders and a scalable business model among other things.
The kind of success that Allied Digital has seen is something that almost all
SP's want to emulate. Going down the memory lane Nitin Shah, recollects his and
Allied's journey from then to now.

The Beginning

Born and brought up in South Mumbai, Shah had decided in his early teens
that he wanted to be an engineer. Despite hailing from a strong Gujarati
background, Shah opted to foray into a technology domain, instead of his
father's trading business. Shah holds a bachelor's degree in electrical
engineering from VJTI College and completed his schooling from Elphinstone
Technical High School. He later completed a two-year course in Inter Science
from St Xaviers College. "My name was in the IIT Mumbai list as well as VJTI.
But I was compelled to choose VJTI because my mother wanted me to stay near her
at all times," smiled Shah.

Academically bright, Shah is a graduate of the first batch of the computer
science stream (1977) of VJTI, under Mumbai University. "During that year VJTI
had a computer system which was connected to TIFDR DEC ten system which was
connected through a satellite. So ultimately we were the first batch from Mumbai
University who passed out with the understanding of programming language," Shah
remembers.

Onto the tech path

Shah began his professional career with Crompton Greaves, which landed him a
purchase job. "I was not really interested in material management so I decided
to shift completely to the technical field," reminisced Shah. He later joined
Nelco Limited wherein he was more than happy to gain the technological
experience, which he always aspired towards. The selection process was tough and
Shah remembers how he was selected after six rounds of interviews.

After working with Nelco for a couple of months, he joined CMC Limited in
January 1978 and worked for five years as a customer support engineer. "My major
exposure to mainframe maintenance biz was acquired during my stint in CMC, which
was then a semi-government organization. They were created to take over the IBM
business, who were banned from India along with Coca-Cola, due to the political
scenario at the time."

Working with CMC gave Shah an opportunity to learn about mainframe computers
and associate himself with large customers like APCL, Mafatlal Consultancy
Services and Voltas. "Those days customer support was completely different from
what it is now. Back then everything was about getting into the depth of the
problem, basically like getting an oscilloscope to troubleshoot. So somehow
trouble shooting went into my blood and I am a hardcore trouble shooter now."

New Vistas: Shah at DQ Channels SP Summit aboard Star Cruise

Shah was also trained on the IBM 1401 boxes which was the latest technology
then and the most popular in 1978. After working with CMC for four and a half
years, he moved on to Digital Equipment, which was the third largest mainframe
computer company in India in commercial market. During the two and a half years
that he worked with them Shah also got a chance to work on all Digital Equipment
Corporation products like the DEC Computers PDP level.

Later he joined ICL (International Computer Limited) (which was acquired by
Fujitsu), and worked on the first ICL 901 series third generation computer. From
there he moved to Mafatlal Consulatncy Services. Detailing in brief about his
stint at Mafatlal, Shah shared that they used to own the mainframe computers and
the company would allocate usage slots to the end user like State Bank of India,
Unit Trust of India. Reminiscing about those times Shah said that people would
come to the consultancy firm to do the processing and would then take the output
with them. Unlike today when we have personal computers, at that time computers
were hired on hourly basis. So in such a scenario once the text drive went down
for two months. Mafatlal Consultancy Services was incurring losses of crores
because of the outage and it was during such scenario that RH Bengali, Senior
Executive at Mafatlal banked upon Shah to solve the problem. Shah took up the
challenge and he was able to solve the problem within 48 hours.

Allied Starts

Coincidentally it was Bengali, who encouraged Shah to start his own
business. That is how in 1984 Shah took his first entrepreneurial step by
starting his own company. Digital Data Services, as Allied was known back then
stared by offering peer to peer networking solutions at a time when PC had just
entered the market. His early list of clients included Pfizer, Forbes, Bombay
Dyeing, LIC and the Indian Navy. "During that period nobody would have thought
that in IT services this is a viable business model and one in which you can
earn money. There were questions about its scalability and the prospective
future business as well. But destiny drew me on this path and I landed up in
this field. Today it is a huge success and an emulated business model."

Rocky roads ahead

Recruiting experienced people in his company and at the same time updating
them about mainframe computers at that period was the major challenge faced by
Shah in those days. "Making business or trying to reach the margin was not
difficult but getting the right kind of resources was the major problem I had to
face during that time. But, being an ambitious person as always I believed in
myself and made sure that I did my best to share the knowledge with my
resources," he said. Shah likes to believe that he is a thorough professional
as, "Professionals are the ones who are highly knowledgeable and would like to
share their knowledge and skills with the people around them. I made it a point
that I will educate my customers not with the sole purpose of reaping benefits
but also with the aim of helping them in understanding the technology in a much
disciplined manner. This helped in creating goodwill with the customers rather
than fooling them with incomplete information. Working earlier for six years
helped me gain the knowledge I required to share with the customers," Shah
elucidated. He is also proud of the fact that he was the first person to educate
people about DOS (Disk Operating System).

Life in fast lane: Shah strikes a pose

Keeping the faith

Allied Digital Services is currently the leading IT infrastructure
management and technical support services company in Mumbai. It provides a range
of IT infrastructure solutions and services including managed services and
physical and information security solutions to leading Indian and global
corporations. It has successfully managed to make its presence felt in over 132
locations in India and over 40 states in the USA (through its acquisition of En
Pointe Global Services). "We wanted to address the large corporate customers
too, so we kept increasing our reach to other parts as well. We began with four
locations, doubling it to eight and we kept going forward the same way. So from
16 we went to 32, from there to 48, then 64 and so on. Now we are present in 132
locations across the country," shared Shah.

Allied Digital's clients currently include biggies in the industry like World
Bank, Oracle, DuPont, Nestle, Deutsche Bank and Boeing. Presently the company
has an employee strength of over 1,500 people, and they have plans to increase
their employee workforce soon. "I have been very fair in selecting people based
on their merits only. Our major earnings come from customer services, these
earning in fact take care of the entire expenditure that we incur in running the
organization. So obviously an efficient workforce is a must for us. The major
quality which has helped me throughout is my positive attitude.

I believe, that every businessman should have a positive approach towards
their work."

Shah has always been interested in doing direct business with customers
rather than involving franchisee or any other dealers. He believes that getting
involved with the customers directly increases the loyalty and also helps to
know about the customer experience. "Earlier, around 1994-95, people would boast
about their partnership with 1,500 dealers or so and I was proud to proclaim
that I had no dealers. Going direct is expensive but it creates a never ending
satisfaction and faith among customers.

I would rather sell the right technology to a single customer instead of a
lot of them having a bad experience with us. It is because of my this conviction
that even today I am providing support to all my customers. In fact customers
from large companies have turned their direction towards Digital because of the
bad phase they had to face with other companies," elaborated Shah.

Rules of the game

While making money is important Shah is categorical that he will not make it
unethically. Discussing the core values of Allied Digital, Shah pointed out that
it was important for them to apply three mega forces in order to maintain
standard and be recognized as the most admired company in the Indian market and
they could only do so by playing a fair game.

According to Shah the three rules which have always kept him ahead in the
game are, "It is very important to develop technological depth in this field.
This can be your trump card because there is stiff competition in the market.
The second is a pan-India reach, because we just can't be a Mumbai-based
company. One has to invest a lot in human and financial resources, offices and
make sure that you have multi-location presence. The third one is putting the
best processes in place through the most mature mannered system."

Shah decided to adopt the inorganic growth strategy in a bid to overcome the
constraint of time and acquired En Pointe Global LLC with a presence of over 40
states in the USA. And further the acquisition of Digicom helped them enhance
their delivery capabilities.

Despite all the growth for Shah it is the small and simple things in life
that matter the most. Among the things that he will always treasure and are a
cause of personal satisfaction are when Allied acquired 80.5 percent stake in
the USA-based remote management service provider En Pointe Global Services LLC,
for an equity valuation of $30 million in cash and equity swap deal. While
Allied Digital has always walked away with industry acclaim including the DQ
Channels Excellence Awards, Shah prides the fact that he was also nominated for
the 2006 Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Ernst and Young.

An old family photo from the Shah  album

Core Values

While Shah has faced many challenges in over two decades that he has been in
business, man management has been the biggest challenge for him till date. "I
have witnessed evolution of technology and jumped into new stages of
technologies as well, no matter how difficult it was. For me the stages would be
defined as from mainframe era to PC, later to networking and from there to
Internet, and then Wi-Fi and currently to cloud computing. These changes have
never worried me because I started my career with mainframe and I was always
ready to adopt new technologies, which were a part and parcel of my life. Making
people think the way you think is the most difficult task for me especially at
this level, and I think I am doing it pretty well," expressed Shah.

To be proclaimed as the most admired global IT services company is what Shah
is aiming for Allied Digital Services. Shah aspires to create a similar
benchmark for his company in other countries as well, by just not being the most
profitable company but by also creating core values. Shah feels that the
differentiation can be created in excelling in seven layers which include
transaction, service and support, service-oriented attitude, relationship
building with the customers, trust, capability, and ethics.

Favored pursuits

Shah proclaims himself to be a big foodie and completely loves to eat to his
heart's satisfaction. "I love to eat and music is my stress-buster all the time
whenever I am not working. I also keep track of the latest hit songs. I value
the new songs as far as I give value to the old ones. People do criticize
remixes nowadays but I feel that something which appeals to the masses out in
the market is not bad either. Reading is also one of my hobbies and yes, I do go
through management books once in a while. During my college days I was a big
movie buff. I love watching any flick which connects to the audience and also
the ones which are full of masala with pure entertainment," smiled Shah.

Shah would never prefer to be settled in any other country rather than India.
In fact for a man whose business takes him across the world, he suffers from
homesickness if he stays away from India for more than 10 days. He loves to
spend time with his family which includes his son and daughter (he lost his wife
in 2005).

Recounting his happiest moments, Shah said that the birth of his only son is
one of the most cherished moments of his life. "The feeling of being a first
time father will always be cherished and I was on the seventh heaven that
particular day."

minakshis@cybermedia.co.in