A Visionaries in the Making

In business, there are mainly two factors that set one's goals-the mission and the vision. Some believe in short-term goals and strive hard to achieve them without taking into account the implications of the market. They make their policies in accordance to the market needs and perform for a short duration. Decisions like this may get uncontrolled and may upset the entire business in the long run. This set of people enter the rat-race unknowingly. Another set of people first decide on their goal, analyze their competency and then structure themselves. These people gradually create a space of their own and are the toughest survivors in the market. Maptech Infosoft falls under the second category. Also, there have been ample cases when friendship has blossomed into business partnerships.
R Sridhar, K Gangadharan and MK Anand are the pillars of Maptech Infosoft. The three friends have 20 years of experience in the IT industry.
R Sridhar is one of the directors, a simple and unassuming individual and the technology expert of Maptech. He manages government institutional training projects on cyber law. His passion is to facilitate customers with solutions that revolutionize their business with minimum expenditure. He has travelled extensively to couple of countries to facilitate IT restructuring and international conferences. Sridhar is also a co-founder of See Change Consulting-a Chennai-based training and business consultancy company.
K Gangadharan is an enterprising individual and a wonderful relationship builder of Maptech. He has been helping customers with unique IT infrastructure solutions for business growth and cost effectiveness. He personally handles government and large projects. His passion is to build everlasting relationship with customers, much beyond business transactions. He has travelled extensively to couple of countries to establish the sales team for another IT organization and attended international technical conferences.
MK Anand, the third pillar of Maptech Infosoft looks after the marketing for Maptech. He is a dynamic individual and a firm believer of the 'Here and Now' philosophy. He handles the business development team at Maptech. 'Instant Pre-sales Support' to customers is his core competency and passion. He is pursuing spiritual practice (Raja Yoga of Meditation) under the guidance of his Guru Chariji Maharaj of Shri Ram Chandra Mission.
From the inception, the directors were sure that they would only offer those products and solutions that needed to be pushed into the market rather than merely ship well-known products that sold on the virtue of their brand name. This is precisely the reason why we are not spread out in many locations. We want to restrict ourselves in certain key areas, like IT infrastructure and Web services. But this does not mean that the company is not equally present in other verticals. Be it IT or non IT organizations, Maptech offers wide range of infrastructure solutions across a cross-section of business segments. Apart from providing IT enabling solutions, Maptech also represents PPP Infotech to provide end-to-end solutions, Internet messaging and Web applications. We are also doing promotional activities, where we are providing end-to-end client services and 24-hour customer support. The company closely work with selective clients, who precisely deal in such products. With lots of SIs offering various end-to-end solutions, the three promoters wanted to distinguish Maptech from other companies in the field. They got into this business with a game plan different from others, they started off as a regular SI, with time, they slowly migrated into the niche segment they are presently in.

Since it was a new organization, customers were not ready to accept the technology that Maptech had to offer. But after a few installations and through word of mouth, they started laying a path for their growth. To ensure that the three directors did not lose sight of their mutual objective, they assumed three different roles, depending on their individual strengths. Customer satisfaction has always been the focus for Maptech Infosoft. Anand comments that his whole process of dealing in software does not only include selling a particular product for the time being, but selling a whole concept to the customers and help them ease their computer handling and operating system to improve work efficiency. "It is my belief in myself that motivates me to work. If I work for just money, I will never be successful, it is the passion for business which drives me and I believe that in this world." Despite the fact that surviving in such a market has been tough, Gangadharan feels it is dedication that has always kept them going. The age-old latin dictum-'fortune favors the bold', is indeed applicable to this illustrative case of these three friends.

Ramkumar R
(ramk@cybermedia.co.in)