The Unflinching Target Man

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Systems
is one of the leading names in data care and data recovery
products, services, and training. The company, founded in 1994, has
become one of the market leaders in software product and application
development with a global footprint of 5,000,000 user licenses spread
over 35 countries. Headquartered in New Delhi, the company has its
software development centres in New Delhi, Noida and Pune. The
regional sales and support offices are located in Mumbai, Bangalore,
Kolkata. Unistal represents customers in the Middle East, US, and
Singapore. One man whom we can attribute this success to is Alok
Gupta, MD, Unistal Systems. He along with his 'good old friend',
Pankaj Mathur (Co-founder and director of the company), embarked on
this journey 17 years ago and both have taken the company beyond
horizons. “I have always been positive in my life and never tried
to take a wrong path to success. My mantra for success would be honesty
and hard work. I will find out different positive ways to
reach the destination. But changing ways does not mean I will take
unprofessional or unethical ways. Whenever my life gets stagnant, I
take a break for 7 days and observe my business from outside. Then I
come to know what extra I need to do,” said Gupta.

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BEGINNING

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from
Fatehpur, near Kanpur (UP), and with a BE degree in Computer
Science from SSGM College of Engineering, Shegaon, Maharashtra, Gupta
started his career in 1990 by working for a Bengaluru-based
anti-virus company, Nashsoft Systems, where he was responsible for
nation-wide marketing. Under his aegis, Nashsoft's (having a single
product of Rs 1,495) turnover grew from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 3.1 crore in
just 3 years. He was aptly rewarded for this milestone which is
visible from the fact that he joined the company as sales and
support executive and resigned as the country manager. But he
couldn't continue for long, as he was smitten by the entrepreneur
bug. Getting inspired from his only one boss in the professional
industry or rather his role model, Narendra Kumar (Naren), the owner of
Nashsoft, he decided to start his own business. After resigning
from Nashsoft in December 1993, Gupta along with another colleague,
Pankaj Mathur, set up Unistal Systems on January 14, 1994. Gupta
pointed out, “We started Unistal with 35 sq ft office, paid Rs
2,500 as a security, two scooters, and another brand (Stellar) to
establish. We began this journey with virtually zero investment and
as a sole marketing organization for the Stellar products. We
continued to sell Nashsoft products as well. Unistal started
basically as a marketing and support organization.”

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ROAD
TO SUCCESS

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began
with marketing Stellar data recovery software and Unistal
anti-virus-both the products developed by Stellar. Apparently, the
first billing of the Unistal was to the Prime Minister's Office,
which acted as a major push factor in its growth. “One day, a
client came to our office with a logically crashed hard disk due to a
virus. As all his accounting data was inside the hard drive with no
backups, he wanted us to recover all those data. We took up the
challenge and performed the recovery with the available software
tools. It took us 25 days to do the job. Today, we can do the same
data recovery job in just 10 minutes. We immediately realized that as
the volume of data is going to increase, more and more cases will
come and hence, we started data recovery services,” pointed out
Gupta. However, earlier most of the job for the company used to come
from north India only, including Delhi and NCR. This prompted Gupta
to take up the matter with Stellar that if they have to expand their
reach to the rest of the country, they had to have software products
as well. Thus, software for data recovery from hard drives was
launched. “Though we had products as well as services, our struggle
period was still on. In 1998, Stellar told us that both the companies
aren't able to make enough money, and subsequently decided to part
ways. Stellar sold us the copyright of Unistal anti-virus, provided
training to two of my people, and took back the Stellar brand,”
highlighted Gupta. “When I set up the company, I was only 24.
Hurdles came into our way but to me there is no substitution for hard
work and there is no shortcut too. If your direction is right, then
no one can stop you from excelling in your chosen path,” said
Gupta.

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MILESTONES

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gradually
became a development company and with its technical
expertise, it launched its 1^st product called 'Crash
Proof ', a data loss prevention tool. Till date, the company has
sold its more than 5 million licenses. In between, the company also
developed 'Quick Recovery', data recovery software for Windows
product range and till date, it has more than 40 products on Quick
Recovery. Gupta further said, “The first major breakthrough for us
came in 1999 when we had the first OEM partnership with HCL for Crash
Proof. Though the first order value was of only Rs 5 lakh, we can't
forget the happiness that came along with it. With this tie-up, our
struggle got over because we started getting enough money that we
could spend on R&D, marketing, and advertisements.” “In
2001, the secondmajor breakthrough came with an OEM tie up with
Wipro, which continues till date continues. Then in 2004, we brought
Kaspersky to India. The partnership lasted till 2007, wherein they
broke the partnership without giving us any notice. So, immediately
in 2008, we signed up with BitDefender. Till date, we are going on
with BitDefender very well,” added Gupta. Then in 2009, Unistal
launched its flagship product called 'Protegent' with a focus on
providing complete security. Initially, the company launched it for
laptops and recently, it launched an Enterprise version of Protegent.
“This launch has given us a tremendous response from corporate
sector and wherever we have demonstrated this product, we haven't lost
a single order as of now. We have done POC at 20 places in the
last 3 months and orders have already come from 13 out of 20 of these
places. And the rest are in process. We have not found one company
that has said no to this product. Our clientele starts from corporates
like Hero to engineering companies and institutions. This
solution includes laptop tracking, data theft/leakage prevention,
with activity monitoring and asset management,” pointed out Gupta.
Moreover, the company has a couple of cloud solutions as well, out of
which, one is Pipeline Information Management System that it
developed for Bharat Petroleum and GAIL. It is a cloud based solution
that was launched in 2005. And till date, it has done more than 39
projects on PIMS for companies like GAIL, IOC, BPCL, GSPL, British
Petroleum (Oman), and Petronas (Malaysia). In fact, PIMS has become
mandatory for all the pipeline and gas projects in India and Unistal
enjoys moe than 70% market share for this solution in India.

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OF
STRENGTH

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17
years down the line, from a company of two, Unistal now has more
than 300 people in the group. From a revenue of Rs 20 lakh in the
first year, the company now has a turnover of Rs 25 crore. It has 4
regional offices, 21 branch offices in Dubai, Oman, Malaysia, and
Netherlands. Unistal has a local tie up in these countries wherein it
provides sales and support. Apart from these, it also export its
software to more than 150 countries online and to more than 25
countries directly. There is one more company in the group now—JPAC
Technologies. Apart from Alok Gupta and Pankaj Mathur, there are two
more directors in the company-Jitendra Kulkarni and Chirag Shah.
JPAC caters to the PIMS solution
outside India and software development projects from different
countries. Unistal also has a share holding in Touchmate India,
having its HQ in Dubai. “In this process, I have received
tremendous support from people around-be it my teammates or my
family. In our success story, the contributions have come from the
internal people, partners of the company, and finally, the luck. My
employees have also struggled with me and we have people working with
us for the last 10 to 12 years. They are also responsible for the
growth of the company. During this journey, people have cheated us
including our own staff. One of the staff sold the source code to a
US company, which stopped immediately when we filed a case.
Ironically, due to our Indian laws, they are still selling the
software in the country,” said Gupta. “My parents and wife have
never questioned any of my decisions. They have totally supported my
decisions till date. Though sometimes they feel that I take
unnecessary risks in life, I have never proved them wrong as I have
the courage to take risks. I have two lovely daughters, Nishtha and
Palak, who sometimes miss me as I could not spend enough time with
them. But they have never complained. My wife, Sunila, after
spending 14 years with me, now sometimes complains that I need to
give her more time than work,” concluded Gupta.