Arun Jain
Chairman & Managing Director, Polaris Software

Arun Jain, 40, is a first generation entrepreneur, who promoted Nucleus Software Group with a few friends in 1986.

The idea behind launching Nucleus was to do something different_develop a world-class software house. In its formative years, Nucleus specialised in the delivery of software development and project services for the global consumer banking division of Citibank India.

In 1993, Jain promoted Polaris Software Lab Limited with software development centres in Noida (near New Delhi) and in Chennai. Polaris Software is a global software house providing quality and customized information technology (IT) solutions to several multinational clients across 20 countries. Polaris commits itself to its customers' needs by partnering with them on their IT requirements, helping them meet their business strategies with a difference, by giving them enough time and energy to focus on their areas of core competence.

Born in 1959, into a middle class family of nine other siblings, it is passion, involvement and ethics that have shaped the course of Jain's life. He believes he got these qualities from his father, who strove to provide for his children's education even if it left him perennially in debt. His father's legacy to Jain is what real success is. He values leadership, creativity and resource utilisation. Although he had the coveted "green card" in hand, and had the opportunity to migrate to the US and embrace assured affluence and an easy life, he instead, driven by his own vision, ventured to set up a centre of excellence in his own country. That centre of excellence is Polaris.

Polaris' philosophy revolves around the same value systems that Jain grew up with and continues to practise. Jain, who holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Delhi College of Engineering (1983), believes in people power and often says, "with committed people you can achieve what most people think is impossible".

Polaris' growth is testimony to this philosophy. Polaris has been recording an impressive growth of over 100% consecutively for the last six years. The company hit the primary market in August 1999, which received phenomenal response from both retail as well as institutional investors. In fact, the Polaris IPO revived retail investor interest in the stock market. With over 37, 725 shareholders Polaris has the largest shareholder base in the Indian IT industry.

Jain, apart from focussing on growth, is also quality and empowerment driven. Polaris as an organisation has developed international standards and, in fact, its business units that handle Citibank projects are aligned to SEI CMM Level 4 currently. Citibank itself has been certified SEI CMM Level 4 compliant. KPMG Peat Marwick has also certified Polaris for the ISO 9001 Quality Certification. Polaris has around 2200 professionals spread all over the world with over 6500 person-years of experience, who develop and maintain mission critical application software.


Actually, Jain doesn't like to be known as the tough talking, number crunching CEO of a software enterprise that employs around 2200 people across India, the Americas, the Far East, Europe and the Middle East. Call him the heart and soul of Polaris and he'll love it. That's the way Jain is. Involved. Ethical. Passionate.

Involved as he is, with the careers of each of his associates (at Polaris employees are called associates), he believes that the task of an entrepreneur is not so much to create a job as it is to create an opportunity. He is the sort whom you will find leaning over a junior programmer's cubicle trying to find out how a particular solution is being worked out and offering his own outside the box thinking. There is no room for ego in his lexicon as much as there is for being available. To the extent that, he recently wrote a letter from his desk with his e-mail address on it, which later was created into an ad by Polaris' ad agency inviting software professionals in the U.S back to India. Involved he is with his people. He loves them.

The futuristic outlook at Polaris makes it India's hottest and fastest growing information technology (IT) company. As an organisation, Polaris is full of verve and energy: driven by a team of enthusiastic people. People that are channelised by a singular mission: To make Polaris an Indian institution that provides leadership globally.

In terms of geographies, Polaris operates in India, Singapore, Dubai, and the United States of America. Polaris has its worldwide headquarters at Chennai, development centers in Chennai and New Delhi and has wholly-owned subsidiaries in the U.K, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Australia and Singapore and representative offices in Riyadh, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi.

Jain is a firm believer in management guru C K Prahlad's philosophy that a company has to satisfy the economic needs of society by having a strong vision, purpose and, most of all, the will to overcome obstacles along the way.

Success to Jain is determined by how much he and his company have contributed to society. In other words, how many people have we generated employment for, what kind of opportunity have we given them, how can we develop leaders at all levels and how can we be an Indian institution providing leadership globally? A simple and down-to-earth person, Jain believes that people drive a company. He is often heard saying__ happy people make a happy organisation.

Jain sees Polaris becoming a quality Indian transnational only with people on its side. Under Jain's stewardship, Polaris has several unique people practices. From its team of committed associates, Polaris annually selects a few to award the title of Konark, which is depicted by the mythological Indian wheel that symbolises excellence and energy (sun). Konarks at Polaris are high achievers who share the vision and mission of the organisation. They are responsible to drive the company through the strategic thinking and brainstorming sessions. The Konarks enjoy the privileges of additional perks such as stock options and faster career development programmes. Besides contributing to the growth of the organisation, the teams of Konarks have a platform through which their families get an opportunity to interact on many occasions, thereby building a large close-knit family.

Pre-Lakshya and Lakshya are two special initiatives that keep the organisation continuously energized. Pre-Lakshya is an interactive forum for inputs from each and every associate for the direction setting process of the organisation. Together with the inputs of Pre-Lakshya, brainstorming at Polaris happens at the annual meet called Lakshya, which in Sanskrit means goal orientation. Each year Konarks and the senior management get-together and review the learnings from the previous year and articulate the direction for the coming years.

The effort is unique in that this serves more as a strategic thinking forum than as a business planning one. This is a strong example of managing the goals and objectives through sub conscious energy levels of the associates of the organisation.

Recently, The Economic Times had this to say about Jain: "Jain…reminds you to desist from measuring success in purely financial terms. May be that's why Polaris has its Ullas Trust, which provides scholarships to over 1500 students based on merit and family income." India's premier business magazine Business India too commented on Jain and Polaris: "The leitmotif, 'Lakshya', keeps recurring as the underlying theme in the evolution of both Jain and Polaris. In its people-orientation, Polaris has focused on some unique concepts to help develop skills and enhance motivation". From just eight associates, Polaris has grown to an around 2200-member team now. 850 members of this team operate out of the new, swank, futuristic, state-of-the-art, Polaris Foundation facility, equipped with cutting edge technology, at Navalur on the outskirts of Chennai.

Jain is active in business circles. He is a member of National Association of Software And Service Companies (NASSCOM), Confederation Indian Industry, Computer Society of India, Indo-Canadian Chamber of Commerce, German Chamber of Commerce, Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council and Madras Management Association. He is also Vice Chairman of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, Tamil Nadu Branch and Committee Member in the Madras Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

Jain is happily married to Manju and they have a son, Uday and a daughter, Aarushi. The Jains live in Chennai.

Bharat Manglani
Founder & President
FootPath, Inc.

Bharat Manglani is the Founder & President of FootPath, Inc. an Internet Wireless Infrastructure company based in Boston. Prior to founding FootPath, Bharat was the Founder & Ex-CEO of NetGuru Systems, Inc. NetGuru Systems is an IT consulting company offering Integrated Web-Database Based Application customization and software quality assurance. Bharat started NetGuru in January, 1994 and grew it to a $9 million - 94 employee company. In 1999, NetGuru was awarded 2nd Fastest (Fast-50 New England) growing technology company in New England, 24th Fastest (Fast-500 USA) Growing Company in US. NetGuru was acquired by Research Engineers, Inc. (renamed as NetGuru, Inc. on 02/07/00) NASDAQ:NGRU on September 14, 1999. Bharat was awarded "Top 100 Technology Pioneers" award by the World Economic Forum in January, 2000 at Davos, Switzerland. Bharat, 34, has completed his M.S.E.E. from University of Massachusetts, B.E. in Electronics & Communications from Delhi College of Engineering, India and M.B.A. courses in Finance and Marketing from Northeastern University, Boston.

Mr. Atul Kunwar
Managing Director
3Com India Pvt. Ltd.


Atul has over 12 years of work experience in the IT/Telecom Industry spanning India centric and global assignments. He is currently the Managing Director for 3Com India Pvt. Ltd. - looking after India and the SAARC rigion and is responsible for business spanning 3Com’s entire portfolio of world leading products.

Atul started his career as a Management tranee with HCL group in 1986. After a intial sales assignment he moved on to the product management role (Micros/Networking) and subsequently set up HCL’s Financial Serveces Industry sales team in mumbai. He then moved to head HCL Hewlett - Packard’s west entity as the Regional Manager.

His next assignment was setting up of a new company within the HCL group Frontline Solutions, Delhi as a CEO. He then look over the role of Vice Prisedent of Strategic Planning / Business Development for the HCL group- a role in which he was closely associated with the restructuring and transition of the group into a soft ware focussed business (1995-1997), he then moved to executive Vice President (Sales and Marketing) to HCL general instrument - an HCL joint venture. In mid 1998, he moved to HCL Technologies as Executive Vice President - International Marketing and was involved in the software services business prior to taking up the 3Com assignment.

Atul is a Electrical Engineer from Delhi College of Engineering and MBA in Marketing and Finance from Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi University.

Mr.K Ganesh
Director
IT&T Limited

Delhi-based IT&T is India's leading etransition company, using the Internet as an enabler for its businesses, which include software development, eBusiness application development ("e-transitionIT"), call center management services ("netmanageIT"), network and systems integration services ("smartsourceIT"), as well as IT incubator facilities ("nurture IT").

One of the hottest products is IT&T's B2Bkernel - a web based business-to-business procurement engine - is reported by the company to be on par with e-transition software products developed by well-known names such as Ariba and Commerce One. The B2B kernel will enable companies to quickly use the Internet to do trading. The engine is primarily designed for sourcing of products, which need integration and installation services and post installation warranty and maintenance services.

Business:

Corporate Information: The Registered Office, earlier to 13th November, 1997 was at 24-B, Connaught Place, New Delhi 110 001) Registered Office: F- 128 Mohammadpur, New Delhi -110066 Tel. No.: (011) 6165300 Fax. No.: (011) 6164213 Web address: http://www.ittindia.com/ E-mail : neha@ittindia.com.

IT&T is India's leading etransition company, using the Internet as an enabler for its businesses, which encompass the following: IT&T has a software development centre under the Software Technology Park scheme, which enables it to export software without the incurrence on any taxation. IT&T's focus is on enabling customers to exploit the potential of the internet by offering web enabling software development services which includes estrategy consulting, ebusiness application development, ebusiness integration and e-enabling/ migration of applications. IT&T has created substantial intellectual capital by developing two software products. It has developed a generic B2B trading platform for business-to-business commerce called B2Bkernel. A few licences have already been sold and there are several potential sales in the pipeline. The other product is a web enabled telecom billing package-Bill IT. The marketing of this product is expected to commence shortly as it is currently undergoing beta testing.

IT&T has set up a web enabled IT services business under the NetManageIT name. This business line reflects an ambitious attempt by IT&T to leverage its service capabilities (particularly in the facilities management arena) into the lucrative call centre market. IT&T's resources are perfectly matched to this business line, and its client list, its reputation, its networking expertise, and its skilled staff will help it to succeed in this field.

The SmartSourceIT business line primarily comprises of network & system integration and facilities management business of IT&T. To reduce the costs of providing hardware supplies to companies, IT&T has developed a B2B portal, www.smartsourceit.com, which efficiently helps meet the hardware needs of its clients. It is felt that www.smartsourceit.com, will differentiate IT&T from its competitors, because it is the only vendor in India to have a web-based sales strategy at present.

NurtureIT, IT&T's incubation facility, is involved in the provision of technical, managerial, and financial support to IT start-ups in the pre-venture capital stage. IT&T is leveraging its existing expertise in hardware, and its software development capabilities to provide support services to these IT start-ups. NurtureIT has an exclusive tie-up with the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT) and the Foundation of Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) for development of business ideas that originate from IIT, Delhi students and alumni. IT&T also has agreements with global venture capital funds to provide second stage financing.

Mr. K Ganesh: age 37 is the Director of IT&T and is an engineer from the Delhi College of Engineering and an MBA from IIM, Calcutta. Mr. Ganesh began his career with HCL Corporation. Mr. Ganesh is a known marketing professional with established entrepreneurial skills and has taught in various Business Schools including Jamnalal Bajaj, Mumbai & IMT, Ghaziabad.

Source: Business Today, asiansonline.com, itworld-comdex.com
The research for this article has been done by Ambrish Bajaj