The Most Innovative Business Leaders To Look Out 2020 by The Enterprise World

ST INNOVAT O M

IVE

THE

www.theenterpriseworld.com | APAC Edition | June 2020

Business

leaders

Empowering Innovations in BIOTECHNOLOGY

Dr. Nagma Abbasi Founder & CEO

Leader In Spotlight

VIKRAM AKEPATI

An expert in

BARITE SOURCING

EDITIONS

SERVICE PROVIDERS FOR 2020

THE

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

F ST O

5 RECOM ME

ED ND

UPCOMING

THE MOST INNOVATIVE

HR Tech

www.emirates.com

It is said that new technology and new product are created to solve the big problem or necessity is the mother of invention. We can easily understand this as some time ago news came about the launch of new Mangalyaan and it was said that the cost of its operation is as low and negligible as the operation of auto-rickshaw. Everyone appreciated it. Of course, this innovation was a great success and achievement. There are many successful examples of innovation even in the middle of the career. Many believe that people between the ages of 40 and 50 are not seen as innovators in the field of career. It is not at all that older people are not innovative. Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC Restaurant, achieved success at the age of 60 due to the innovation of his unique dish. In a gist, Innovation helps us to grow beyond boundaries and to create a path for newcomers to learn, innovate, and achieve. In this issue of The Enterprise World, The Most Innovative Business Leaders to look out 2020, we proudly feature those business leaders who are the real trailblazers; made their unique position in the market with their utmost innovative offerings. Featuring for the cover story is Dr. Nagma Abbasi. Dr. Nagma Abbasi established NextGen Life Sciences in 2014 with an objective to become a frontrunner in the distribution of innovative biological products and services for the Life science research and diagnostic market. She is one of the leading names in the field of biotechnology. Mr. Binesh Balan is the leading light behind the long-standing growth of the Oakcapita Advisory LLP. Under his evolutionary vision, the firm is taking steps forward in the landscape of the investment banking industry. Read about his journey till now and what Oakcapita offers. HOUSTON, the city every one dreams of visiting at least once in his or her lifespan. We completely agree with you, it’s really a must-visit the place just not to explore places but also to explore business opportunities. In our special editorial feature Upshot Metros discover HOUSTON – The Most popular international destination. In a candid talk with Mr. Kumar Subramanian let’s discover the rising health technology sector across the world and how his firm ‘75Health’ is changing the market scenario. ‘Purpose Over Profit’, our special editorial feature talks about running businesses with keeping purpose as a center point to achieve the profit. There is a lot more inside! Happy Reading “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” - Alan Kay.

Rushikesh Deshpande

INNOVATION, BEYOND IMAGINATION

We focus to provide solutions that offer a unique user experience and a unique way of using the different videoconferencing and meeting applications while maximizing interaction and collaboration.

www.silexpro.com

The Enterprise World, 420, Pride Purple Square, Above SBI, Wakad, Pune. 411057

9552931801 Follow Us On:

For Editorial Concerns: editor@theentetpriseworld.com For Sales & Branding Enquiries: sales@theenterpriseworld.com For Subscription: info@theenterpriseworld.com Publisher The Enterprise World Creative Content Editor Rushikesh Deshpande Marketing Coordinator(USA) Peter J. PR & Marketing Coordinator James H. Business Development Executive Suchita P. Creative Design Head: V. Mittal Social Media Manager Avinash G. Digital Circulation Manager Amanda V.

This list is NOT a ranking. The companies on listed in magazine serve different aspects of the market, making ranking them in any order except revenue impossible and unfair. We try to bring a perfect platform for business organization to showcase their valued products/ services. Copyrights ÂŠ The Enterprise World | 2019. All Rights Reserved. The images and content included in this magazine should not be copied, transferred or reproduced in any form or by any means, electronics, mechanical, photocopying, recording, otherwise, without proper permission from The Enterprise World. The Enterprise World solely owns all the reprint rights.

Leaders in Spotlight This issue of The Enterprise World, The Most Innovative Business Leaders to look Out 2020 features, Featuring for the cover story is Dr. Nagma Abbasi. Dr. Nagma established NextGen Life Sciences in 2014 with an objective to become a frontrunner in the distribution of innovative biological products and services for the Life science research and diagnostic market. And also provide complete solutions in Instrumentation, Reagents, Next Generation Sequencing Services, Bioinformatics, and customized solutions to Scientists and Researchers. Mr. Binesh Balan, Founder and CEO at Oakcapita Advisory LLP is the leading light behind the long standing growth of the firm. Under his evolutionary vision the firm is taking steps forward in the landscape of the investment banking industry. Premas Life Sciences (PLS). PLS is empowering the health field across the world with its undisputedly most advanced cutting-edge technological offerings. Have a read to an interview with Mr. Praveen Gupta, and get known to the Premas Life Sciences’ quality offerings.

Mr. Chaitanya Nadigam is such an innovative leader in digital marketing who is transforming businesses with out of the box digital marketing solutions through Emblix Solutions. Emblix Solutions is one of the topmost services oriented digital marketing agency of South India (Deccan Plateau) in Hyderabad in the State of Telangana – India. Ms Sheela Lunkad has more than two decades of experience in the area of design and sustainable practices in areas ranging from craft revival, textiles, handcrafted design space, architecture, and ecosustainable hospitality. Ms Sheela is transforming the art sector by providing a unique platform for artists called Direct Create. Emprada Mines and Minerals is one such company that particularly deals in providing API Grade Barite Powder and Barite Ore. Founded in the year 2016, the Emprada is breaking the traditional mining standards by incorporating technology which has signiﬁcantly transformed the businesses. The company deals with quality barite products. Mr. Vikram Akepati, President and CEO at the company and his multi-skilled team is transforming the businesses as well as contributing to a booming economy with hard and smart eﬀorts.

With comprehensive technological solution offerings, WinUall has made its unique position in educational technology landscape. Their quality offerings are transforming the sector by adding simplicity and speed to day to day processes. In a talk with the master mind behind the long standing success of WinUall, Mr. Ashwini Purohit, let’s discover more about the company and their journey towards the success. Kaaspro Enterprises is an information technology and services company that focuses on the health information management environment. The idea of founding an exclusive digital health record services company that helps the medical fraternity to enhance its efficiency and productivity was conceptualized by Mr. Kumar Subramaniam, the Co-founder, and CEO. In an interview with Mr. Kumar Subramanian let’s discover more about the company and their quality solutions offerings in the health technology sector. Omnia Digital is making efforts to fulfil all digital needs of businesses and empower them with providing comprehensive cutting edge solutions under one roof! Omnia’s Founder & CEO Shwetha Prasad and her team of experts strive for innovation that can add speed to their client’s businesses.

DR. NAGMA ABBASI Empowering Innovations in Biotechnology

CHAITANYA NANDIGAM

CONTENTS

Bringing the

KUMAR SUBRAMANIAM A Most Excellent Leader in Health Technology

28 Upshot Metros - Houston

action to brands

Did You Know?

SHWETHA PRASAD Creating brands with a purpose and passion

BINESH BALAN A Leader with Evolutionary Vision

34 WINUALL

A market leader in creating smart institutes

22 It’s really a time to break mediocrity!

SHEELA LUNKAD Scaling up Creativity

PRAVEEN GUPTA

VIKRAM AKEPATI

A game-changing leader

An Expert in

in the eld of Life Sciences

Barite Sourcing

Purpose over Prot

Cover Story

08 June 2020

www.theenterpriseworld.com 09

Cover Story Drug Development and more. Winning over the obstacles

he biotechnology sector has always been tremendously innovative and is on a robust increase trajectory. The sector, with its huge growth capability, will maintain to play a sizable role as a modern manufacturing hub. The life sciences sector is one of the major significant sectors in enhancing India’s global profile in addition to contributing to the boom of the economy. In order to cater the untapped opportunities in the industry, Dr. Nagma Abbasi established NextGen Life Sciences in 2014 with an objective to become a frontrunner in the distribution of innovative biological products and services for the Life science research and diagnostic market. And also provide complete solutions in Instrumentation, Reagents, Next Generation Sequencing Services, Bioinformatics, and customized solutions to Scientists and Researchers. The company wants to deliver the right products of scientific needs in minimum possible time at the doorstep to facilitate research findings in order to bring improvement in the human health and environment. The company is poised to become one-stop-solution to cater to the research needs of scientists in the Field of Molecular biology, Cell Biology, Immunology, Healthcare, 10 June 2020

Like all startup companies, Nextgen also faced initial challenges like capital investment, finding good talent, building customer trust, and good relationship. Without just sitting back relax NextGen overcame these problems and today it stands strong in the market with creating a unique place. The factors that helped NextGen to grow. • Company Culture • Knowledge Management • Clearly Defined Roles • Continued Scalability • Cash Flow • Development of Internal Tools • Consistent Team Quality • Customer Happiness • Core Values • Little Wins • Team Performance Evaluations NextGen is growing every year by 1-2 percent in terms ofprofitability and significantly growing in terms of turn over every year since the foundation. In terms of the employee as well they have a 100 percent retention rate. NextGen has grown its presence in the market as well and adding more customers every year. Their Offerings The NextGen group bridges the gap in understanding the needs and pains of Researchers of the Life Sciences/ Biotech industry and help scientists gain insight on the recent innovations and technologies, assuring a sound knowledge of the subject matter. At first, NextGen try getting insight on the customer

requirements by exchanging ideas, then understand the complete workflow and expect results which in turn helps them to suggest customers’ best possible customized solutions. Their methods of measuring success are not conventional. Dr. Nagma says, “I measure success in different scales like Conversations with clients, ROI, Conversion rate, Customer satisfaction, and others with parameters like referrals from existing clients, growth, profit from the revenue, conversion rate, sales target and a lot more of organization benefit factors.” NextGen, taking a step further with The firm has maintained a longterm relationship with clients by rendering quality services-TAT (Turnaround Time) for the product deliveries by managing inventories with microanalysis of basic needs of prime customers, addressing customer problems customers in time with best possible solutions, maintaining highly skilled and trained sales and technical team. In addition to that, it also has a dedicated team to look into after sales and services. With its augmenting spectrum of products and solutions, NextGen Life sciences empower the mounting realm of research to solve complex analytical challenges in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, government, environmental and industrial research, and the clinical laboratory. The company’s products address a wide range of requirements right from the sample, material characterization, and chemical analysis to clinical diagnoses and biological-based

therapeutics handling. The company offers services for Cell Analysis, Cell Culture & Transfection, Cloning, DNA & RNA Purification, Gene Expression Analysis & Genotyping, PCR, Protein Expression & Analysis, Real-Time PCR, Sequencing, Synthetic Biology, Cancer Research, Stem cell research, Drug Discovery and development, Plant Sciences, Epigenetics and Services for Sequencing, Next Generation Sequencing and Bioinformatics. Looking ahead NextGen is enthusiastic about innovations in Biotechnology like Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) in clinical laboratories, NGS Data analysis, and interpretation of unknown genetic variants. The company has its significant presence in North India and is planning to expand its business plans in West and South India. The NextGen team is excited about the CRISPR technology and its application. CRISPR technology is a simple yet powerful tool for editing genomes. NextGen Life Sciences is keen on transforming the modus operandi of research and future need for scientific discoveries and innovations. NextGen Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd. aims high with the launch of its own-brand products of international standards. At a steady pace, it is working constantly to empower the mounting realm of research to solve complex analytical challenges in the pharmaceuticals, food, environment, biotechnology, and industrial and clinical research. The company’s mission is to discover, delineate and deliver high-quality products and excellent services that

AN ENTREPRENEUR IS AN INDIVIDUAL WHO SETS UP BUSINESS OR BUSINESSES, IDENTIFIES AND SOLVES PROBLEMS, CREATIVE, INNOVATIVE, OPPORTUNIST, RISK-TAKER, SELF-STARTER AND OPEN-MINDED WITH THE HOPE OF MAKING A PROFIT FROM THE ENTERPRISE. ENTREPRENEURS PLAY A KEY ROLE IN ANY ECONOMY, USING THE SKILLS AND INITIATIVE NECESSARY TO ANTICIPATE NEEDS AND BRING GOOD NEW IDEAS TO MARKET. - DR. NAGMA ABBASI, FOUNDER AND CEO

www.theenterpriseworld.com 11

Cover Story enable millions of lives to live a healthy and better life. Dr. Nagma Abbasi, A determined leader The dynamic Founder and CEO, Dr. Nagma Abbasi is leading the development and execution of long-term strategies with the vivid vision of expanding the organizations’ footprints across the global market. She attended IMT Ghaziabad, AMU, Aligarh and Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi for her studies in Business administration, Doctoral studies in Molecular Genetics and Post-Doc in Molecular Biology. She learns from her experiences, failures, and updates herself about the worldly changes through reading. She wants to be the best entrepreneur and an example for the future generation. Her career spans over a decade working with Esteemed Research Institutes and leading Multinational companies in Life Sciences / Biotech industry across various verticals like Product management, customer segmentation, brand management, and strategic marketing. Dr. Nagma ﬁrmly believes that learning new things is ever going progress and emphasizes hard work which is smartly done. Today, with her determination to deliver the best of services and solutions which are smart and futuristic, NextGen Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd. has become the most preferred brand for clients. Words from the Founder and CEO for rising entrepreneurs Dr. Nagma says, “I feel an Entrepreneur is a person responsible for setting up a 12 June 2020

business or an enterprise. Entrepreneur is one who has the initiative, skill for innovation and who looks for high achievements.” He or she works for the good of the people, open up many employment opportunities and leads to the growth of other sectors. He/she is a person who brings in overall change through innovation for the maximum social good. In this process, he/she accelerates personal, economic as well as human development. An entrepreneur should have outstanding leadership qualities. An Entrepreneur should take a risk and should be good in decision making. Also the communication with the team, and the public on behalf of the company. Additionally, it develops strategic goals and assures that the goals are measurable and describable. Also, emphasizes creating and implementing the organization’s vision and mission, assessing risks to the company while ensuring they are monitored and minimized. “In business, what’s dangerous is not to evolve”. Dr. Nagma says, “I ﬁnd the story of KFC’s founder Colonel Harland Sanders is truly amazing. This story is inspirational because it’s an example of how perseverance, dedication, and ambition along with hard work can create success; regardless of your age.” “Never Give Up.” Staying Positive and Passionate can help us to go through a hard time in life and start again. Despite getting failed again and again we should not lose hope. Innovation: A way to win While talking about the innovation

Dr. Nagma says, at present, innovation is an important factor in several aspects of business competition. Innovation enables businesses to present new or improved products to the market before their competitors and thus increase their market share and stay ahead in the market race. Several organizations have been successful and thrive because of innovation, which creates competitive advantages for them. Innovation is a strategy that companies use to create a competitive advantage, producing things that nobody else can, doing things better than everyone else, or introducing superior, cheaper, and faster services. This strategy enables the organization to create long-term competition by gathering knowledge, skills in technology, and experience in creativity and development and introducing new ideas in the form of product innovation, process innovation, or business model innovation. This not only has positive results for the organization but also fosters the growth of the entire national economy. The competitive advantages can result from goods and services that exhibit outstanding diﬀerences from the typical products in the respective domain or that have a lower cost than those of the competitors. In addition to that components of competitive advantage originate from the ability of a business to maximize the eﬃciency and services, and to develop services to which customers respond with high satisfaction rates. • Lack of innovation can kill your company. • Embracing creativity narrows your blind spots. • Innovative product development

puts companies on the offensive • Inventive companies create their own new customers. • Innovation cures myopia. The key achievements NextGen’s key achievement so far consistent growth for the last five years in terms of revenue and profitability. They expand in terms of employee, office space, facilities for the employees and giving them a good environment in the office. NextGen has won the trust of its valuable customers in a short span of time by proving excellent services in Industry. NextGen has been featured and awarded as • “Entrepreneur of the Year in Trading Business” MSMECCII Genentech Asia Awards 2020. • “Best Places to work in 2019” by Business Sight media. • “Women Entrepreneur of the Year 2019” by Business Connect Magazine. • “Company of the year 2018” by The CEO Magazine. • “Emerging healthcare Solution Provider in 2019 by Insightscare magazine.”

The company says that a clean and stimulating oﬃce environment makes employees feel good and rejuvenated. Also, it doesn’t take a lot of investment to make the environment pleasant. It also believes that organizations should provide the team with apt training. This would help them make advancement in their careers and employees would become aware of the latest technologies and industry news, generating more opportunities for them. The company believes that encouraging the team members to participate by inviting their input and suggestions

on how to do things better fosters collaboration within the team. • Don’t Punish Failure and Encourage Happiness: NextGen says the key is to learn valuable lessons from the mistakes. It suggests, “When any members of your team make honest mistakes, don’t punish them--instead, encourage them to try again.” The company also advises organizations to keep an eye on whether employees are happy with their work and their employer. If they’re not, the company can count on this unhappiness to spread.

Overwhelming Client Experiences NextGen Life Sciences shares one of the gratied client experiences of the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi. This client of NextGen was facing a lot of product supply issues that were affecting their project timelines. The company assisted it to minimize their Turn Around Time (TAT) and performed rigorous inventory management by working very closely with scientists. The team members at NextGen did a deep analysis of the clients’ pain points, their projects, applications, their needs and accordingly step by step addressed those points in the best possible way. Today, the institute is getting customized solutions from the company in their assigned budgets.

• “Top 10 Biotechnology Startups to look in 2019” by Biotech Times. • “Top 20 Best Life Sciences StartUps “by Silicon India Magazine. The happening work environment at the ﬁrm • Fuel employees with opportunities and provide a pleasant workplace:

www.theenterpriseworld.com 13

Interview with The Enterprise World

aaspro Enterprises is an information technology and services company that focuses on the health information management environment. The idea of founding an exclusive digital health record services company that helps the medical fraternity to enhance its eﬃciency and productivity was conceptualized by Mr. Kumar Subramaniam, the Co-founder, and CEO.

solutions to health care providers and medical facilities to render their regular processes convenient and quick. Process automation and digitization was the primary channel through which this had to be achieved. The task of enabling medical professionals to enter, store, and share sensitive medical data of patients without compromising on security was challenging.

Started in the year 2010, this organization has become the leader in providing exclusive cloud-based EMR/EHR platforms for doctors, hospitals, and all medical practitioners leverages cloud technology to provide solutions that enable medical practices of all types and sizes to simplify their processes while ensuring data accuracy and security. The ability to present practice-speciﬁc solutions to manage crucial health information eﬀortlessly, and simplifying complex processes through intelligent systems is the specialty of this forward-looking medical information service company.

Although making use of electronic medical record systems to manage critical health information dates back a few decades, it was relatively a new concept for several medical professionals and health care organizations. It required a lot of dedicated eﬀorts to strike a balance between fulﬁlling the needs of the health care industry and educating the providers about the innovative electronic health information management system.

Mr Anish Kumaramangalam, Co-Founder and CTO has created a unique position in market with the hard and smart efforts at the company and talented team of driven by passion people. In an interview with Mr Kumar Subramanian let’s discover more about the 75Health and their quality solutions offerings in the health technology sector. • What were the initial challenges you faced? We have been focusing on providing simple yet effective 14 June 2020

• Which was that point that triggered the growth of the company? Kaaspro has always believed that blending convenience with technology helps an organization to enhance its eﬃciency and productivity. We take the innovation route to fuel growth and achieve success amid competition. At one stage during our evolution, we integrated video-conferencing feature within the application to ensure that a client was accessible to their patients even while travelling. This connectivity that enabled our clients to be integrated and not get isolated was the ﬁrst turning point in our growth. Another break came when we developed a built-in referral module within our 75Health

products to facilitate a treating physician to effortlessly refer his or her patient to a specialist. The feature enabled the specialist to access all the patient information from the referring professional as well. This functionality ensured to keep all the medical professionals and the patients in the loop. These facilities were instrumental in the growth of our products. • How has the company graphs changed since the foundation? Can you share a few statistics? We started out humbly in 2010 with the intention of helping the health care professionals and individuals with an easy, accurate way of medical data management. With our interaction with various clients and professionals from varied medical specialties, we came to understand that innovative health information systems, specifically web applications, were the future of medical record management. They were about to play a significant role in enabling the medical industry with convenient and quick access to crucial medical information, and providing enhanced communication. We have been providing services that were focused on serving the medical community and the health care providers since our company’s incorporation. Our graph started climbing when we took to designing and developing robust and reliable health care technology products in line with the current demand and requirements. In addition to ensuring that our medical data administration technologies warranted maintenance of accurate health

information and its easy sharing, we made it a point to streamline the ďŹ nancial and administrative processes of our clients. We helped medical practices and providers with their regular process, simplifying the processes while enhancing their practice productivity and eďŹ&#x192;ciency. This was what took us to the next level in our growth. Today, we are among the top-ranked electronic health information service providers in the globe, thanks to the success

Mr Kumar Subramaniam www.theenterpriseworld.com 02 15 www.theenterpriseworld.com

Mr Anish Kumaramangalam of our digital products and the demand for automated medical information solutions. • What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing success? The primary reason for our prolonged partnership with clients is the fact that we take the eﬀort to achieve deep insights about their present and future requirements. Moreover, we work on our clients’ settings and provide speciﬁc solutions for the processes that call for prior attention. Our capability to design information systems that take care of clients’ unique needs while ensuring scalability has been the key factor that make us stand apart. At Kaaspro, it is our motto to attend to the individual, unique needs of each client and provide the most appropriate, timely solutions that exceed their expectation. It is one of the aspects that ensure our 16 June 2020

sustenance and success amid all the ups and downs. • What are the services the company focuses on? How are your services diﬀerent from those in the market? Our company has been founded on the objective of providing technology solutions that empower health care providers and medical organizations with timely and quick access to critical medical data so that the quality of care and patient outcomes can be enhanced. In order to achieve this, we have been focusing primarily on developing products that facilitate managing health information accurately. At present, 75Health focuses on medical information systems such as electronic medical record software and electronic health record software. Unlike other service providers, our suite of 75Health products ensure to present complex and novel

features in a simple, convenient way. Our systems are simple, yet intelligent. Regularly fine-tuning our products according to the changing standards and reimbursement models in the medical industry sets our products and services different from our peers. • How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your services? There has been a lot of activity in the health care technology front during the last few years. Information technology has helped improving not just medical record management but several other processes in the health care setting as well, in an unprecedented way. There are several medical data administration products. We at Kaaspro aim at making use of our cloud-based platforms for ensuring effective, quick, and secure health information management.

Our products and services will be based on intelligent systems that enable providers and medical practices to enhance their efficiency and care quality. Our solutions will a range of medical facilities from single physician practices to multispecialties to meet the unique requirements. We intend to provide effective solutions to the health care sector, ensuring increased care quality and patient safety. • Is there any new addition to the list of services? Anything exciting you would like to share? Kaaspro has been spending a lot of effort and resources on research and development of new medical information management products. The latest addition to the list of our technology products that serve the health care industry is personal health record software. This simple and effective form of medical record enables individuals to maintain all their medical data in a relevant and secure manner. In line with the future trend, we have been working on developing the mobile version of the personal health record software that facilitates managing and organizing people’s regular activities related to their health. Individuals, with the use of their mobile devices, can manage their real-time diary to track critical medical parameters. Personal activities such as diet, exercise, and calorie intake may also be recorded and shared. • Can you please brief us about your professional experience? I was the co-founder of Kumaran Systems, and I have headed the Internet products and services, taking care of the responsibilities

since the company’s inception. I have experience of three decades of there and ensured that the organization achieved an outstanding business performance. With my education at the prestigious P.S.G. Institute, Coimbatore, and my experience and exposure at Kumaran Systems, I have gained the expertise related to the nuances of information technology. My interest toward medical information administration systems and the interactions I have had with health care providers have enabled me to conceptualize the innovative electronic health record software. • What are the key achievements of your entrepreneurial journey? Co-founding an information technology-based business and leading the organization toward steady success has been one of the key achievements in my career spanning a few decades. I have had the honor to build the company Kumaran Systems from scratch and guide it toward ﬂourishing success was the most satisfactory part of my entrepreneurial life. I have played a signiﬁcant role in building the team and developing the modern electronic medical record software. We have had a successful run as one of the leading health information web application developers such as the innovative electronic health record and practice management system. I consider these as milestones in my entrepreneurial life. • How do you look after your employees? What makes your team unique?

We believe in encouraging our staff to come up with innovative ideas. At Kaaspro, employees are not only trained and up-skilled regularly but also motivated and incentivized for participating and suggesting creative ideas. With constant collaboration among the team members and our clients, we have achieved to update our products to serve the health care industry in the most accurate and updated manner. The ability to think out of the box and perform efficiently by leveraging technology most optimally, our team achieves t come up with the most modern health care technology products such as the 75Health electronic medical record software and 75Healh practice management system. This is what makes our team stand apart. • It’s a rat-race out there. How do you cope with that? Like in all the contemporary industries, the health information technology service industry is also ridden with heavy competition and fierce fighting for the top slot. With all-round development of health information technologies and multiple vendors pitching for their market share, succeeding and sustaining in the health information technology services market is no easy job. We at Kaaspro endeavor to identify and correct inconsistencies while providing innovative, updated functionality and features in our health information management systems. We ensure that our products are scalable and userfriendly. This way, we efficiently meet the challenges of competition and stay ahead of our peers.

www.theenterpriseworld.com 17

The Most Innovative Business Leaders to Look Out: 2020

MR. BINESH BALAN A Leader with Evolutionary Vision

“

Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.” – Zig Ziglar

he business world today is dynamic, and in order to strive in this fast-changing landscape, the companies to attain quality and excellence in their ﬁelds of operation. The prime objective of every company is its proﬁtable growth and it is possible both internally as well as externally. The internal growth can be achieved either by the introduction or development of new products or by expanding or enlarging capacity of existing products or also by the sustained improvement in sales. Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are quite important sorts of external growth. In today's globalized economy, mergers and acquisitions are being increasingly used the all over as a method for achieving a bigger asset base, for entering new markets, generating greater market 18 June 2020

shares/additional manufacturing capacities, and gaining complementary strengths and competencies, to become more competitive within the marketplace.

Advisory Firm, rendering seamless advisory services to clients seeking in-depth strategy, investing, and ﬁnancial expertise. Antecedent Hurdles

A couple of years ago, the Acquisitions of AmericanEuropean institutions by the Indian companies were a rare sight. However, this situation has taken over a sudden U-turn. Nowadays the reports of Indian companies taking over foreign businesses are more common. To empower businesses with the help of his vast experience in the ﬁeld, Mr Binesh Balan founded Oakcapita Advisory LLP in 2015 and since then, the ﬁrm has been operating smoothly in the landscape of M&A Advisory. Oakcapita Advisory LLP is a boutique Middle Market M&A

“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.” – Zig Ziglar A journey full of hurdles makes destiny more beautiful. Every successful business needs to go through diﬀerent challenges and prove them to stand strong in the market. Oakcapita also faced some major challenges initially. In the era of rising boutique advisors, striking through the competition and creating a unique place in the market was a major challenge for the ﬁrm. Oakcapita

“Balance is

the key; however, it is needed to maintain high standards.

always tries to be ahead in the globalized market and stand out from the rest with its quality services.

growth.

Another challenging task for the ﬁrm was to secure interesting deals and get in chains to globalized market as there are many endless opportunities to spread the wings. Global markets are more interconnected due to the increasing globalization of the M&A sector in general, which is the core focus service among other Investment Banking advisory services.

The firm is providing many services to its valuable clients with insights, expertise and experience through each step of the M&A process. The firm selects its deals after due liability preferring quality over quantity. It is investing in developing an upscale human capital to spot challenges and harness them to opportunities by using local and global knowledge to develop customized strategies fitted to each client in such a highly competitive market.

The Firm has faced numerous other challenges till date. But, what kept it going is its constant focus on turning those challenges into capitalizing opportunities. Now the ﬁrm has an average 30% Y-o-Y

Capital Raise Advisory, and Due Diligence Services. So we are able to provide a holistic M&A/Capital raise solution.

Factors behind the Firm’s Long Standing Success

Range of Quality Oﬀerings

Holding strategic global partnership with a numerous advisory Firms, the Firm is delivering its clients an easy access to massive foreign capital markets. With an exclusive network of international investors, Oakcapita is helping its clients to achieve their strategic intent of growth, expansion, cash ﬂow generation, and proﬁt maximization. “We plan to have a direct presence in all key global markets. Expand team strength to cater to our ever growing clientele.”

Oakcapita provides its services in the ﬁelds of M&A Advisory, www.theenterpriseworld.com 19

The Most Innovative Business Leaders to Look Out: 2020

If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever. -Thomas Aquinas

Mr. Binesh Balan, Founder and CEO- The Master Brain Mr. Binesh Balan is the leading light behind the long standing growth of the firm. Under his evolutionary vision the firm is taking steps forward in the landscape of the investment banking industry. With a vast experience of over a decade working in the Investment Banking industry; he brings in exemplary expertise across diversified areas including M&A, private equity & venture capital deals, and project finance. He possesses specializations in equity and debt syndication fund raising assignments, market entry strategies, JV’s, strategic tie-ups, and management consultancy specialized in GCC, Asian, and European markets. He is closely associated with leading Family Offices, Business groups, HNIs, Venture Capital Funds and Private Equity Funds in the Middle East, Europe, the US, and Asia. He executes business operations

20 June 2020

between the countries of GCC, Europe and India with the help of massive global market knowledge. Under his leadership, the ﬁrm has risen from being a little known start-up to a name to be reckoned with in the M&A advisory industry. The ﬁrm has been recognised as• “Best Boutique M&A Advisory Firm in India - 2019” • “Outstanding Debt and Equity Firm of the Year 2019” • “10 Highly Trusted M&A Advisory Firms” The Happening Work Environment A happy and happening work place is just as essential for any company. Oakcapita gives their employees an opportunity to express themselves in real life business scenarios. They believe the best learning happens with exposure and overcoming the various challenges rather than classroom learning. Key members of the team have risen to be well accomplished professionals in their

respective space/domain. “Mr Binesh Balan says, “Balance is the key; however, it is needed to maintain high standards.” As Oakcapita is pledged to deliver quality services to their valuable clients to grow their business, within the lesser time it became one of the top most trustworthy boutique middle market M&A advisory firm. The firm has quite a number of overwhelming client experiences. The firm is highly focused and committed to integrate effective measures for developing customized growth strategies to help clients capitalize from complex challenges.

WE ACHIEVED A HAT TRICK!!!

BIGSHARE SERVICES PRIVATE LIMITED ADJUDGED

No.1* In Rankings of Registrars by Number of Assignments

Bigshare Services Pvt. Ltd. *Prime Database: Rankings for 2016-17,2017-18 and 2018-19

Head Oï¬&#x192;ce: 1st Floor, Bharat Tin Works Buiding, Opp. Vasant Oasis, Makwana Road, Marol, Andheri (E). Mumbai-400 059. Maharashtra. Contact 92-253820 Email: marketing@bigshareonline.com / investor@bigshareonline.com

302, Kushal Bazar, 32-33, Nehru Place, New Delhi - 110019. Contact: 91-011-42425004/ 47565852 Email: bssdelhi@bigshareonline.com

306, Right Wrong, Amrutha Ville, Opp. Yashodha Hospital Somajiguda, Raj Bhavan Road, Hyderabad - 500082 Contact: 91-40-2337 4967/ 91-40-2337 0295 Email: bsshyd@bigshareonline.com

A/802, Samudra Complex, Near Klassic Gold, C,G. Road Ahemdabad, 380009 Contact: 91-79-40024135 Email: bssahd@bigshareonline.com

From the Editor

It's really a time to break

MEDIOCRITY!

22 June 2020

he Internet is a real invention of democratic values! The journey of the Internet, which started from four or five metropolises in India, from the high-rise settlements where even the most expensive services could be afforded at the outset, continues today across rugged roads, mountain ranges to various corners of the country. Today, nearly 70 million people in the country use the Internet. The number of Internet users has more than doubled in the last five years. In the last five years, the face of the rapidly evolving Internet has changed dramatically, with rapidly changing technologies, consequently cheaper smartphones in the market, and in addition data rates falling due to competition from Internet service providers. Today, India is a huge market for the cheapest smartphones in the world. Internet service rates in India are very low compared to other countries. 1 GB of data costs around Rs 18.5 in India, but the rest of the world spends an average of Rs 600 for the same amount of data. Given this huge price difference, the current era is a boon for Internet users in India. As a result of this cheapness, as many internet users as there were in the country in the first twenty years have been connected to the Internet in the last five years. Today, many businesses are emerging that are completely internet dependant, but at the same time, government schemes, banking, even schooling ... everywhere, the use of the Internet as an alternative to facilitation is increasing. Laptops at home, students sitting in front of mobiles and teachers teaching them from a distance, a picture that seemed impossible even a few months ago has become a part of the daily life of most people around the country today. In these few years, the sudden expansion of the digital universe and the upheaval that followed has come to a turning point. We have stopped here! Now it is the time to move beyond innovation and unspoken enthusiasm to focus on building this digital world with more vigor. In a sense, the Internet is the epitome of what it is all about. Everyone should take as much as they can see from their own window. Take a leisurely stroll, fill your eyes; Just remember that what we are seeing while doing this is a micro part of a larger world.

Innovation is the key to a happier future and the future is now!

www.theenterpriseworld.com 23

The Most Innovative Business Leaders to Look Out: 2020

MR. CHAITANYA NANDIGAM Bringing the action to brands

“

With great power comes great responsibility.

cience and technology have changed people’s lives in a big way. It has made life easier, simpler and faster. In the new era, the development of technology has made everything available on just a single click. Most of the businesses have a new address i.e. the internet.

On the vast canvas of the internet, it needs to let people know about your presence and your quality oﬀerings to grow in the market. Digital marketing is the only way to do so. Rather the best and innovative digital marketing helps you to do so. Mr. Chaitanya Nadigam is such an innovative leader in digital marketing who is transforming businesses with out of the box digital marketing solutions through Emblix Solutions. Emblix Solutions is one of the topmost services oriented digital marketing agency of South India 24 June 2020

(Deccan Plateau) in Hyderabad in the State of Telangana – India. High proﬁle technocrat and blogger – Mr. Chaitanya Nandigam, established Emblix Solutions in December 2012. Emblix Solutions within two years of its operations got the distinction of being ranked as Top 5 Digital and Email Marketing Company in India by Silicon India. Emblix Solutions is showing its unravelled proﬁciency in the digital marketing arena. A success story During the initial days, Emblix Solutions has to struggle hard in acquiring clients and building trust in the industry as enterprises at that time were hardly accustomed to the term digital marketing and it was so tough to break the preconceived thoughts and notions about digital marketing. In addition, digital marketing during the early decades

of the 2000s was in its novice stage and companies were not eager to invest in digital marketing, as they believed more in traditional marketing concepts. Emblix Solutions’ growth was triggered at a point when it implemented digital marketing strategies by devoting intense attention towards understanding the exact requirements or needs of its esteemed clients as per the current market dynamics. In the course of project implementation, the teamwork shown by the employees of Emblix Solutions is quite phenomenal with every employee or professional working within the office premises of this grand edifice (Emblix Solutions) striving hard for the benefit of the client and by keeping the active communication channels open always and at every cost. Emblix Solutions through its

unique offerings and different business model has succeeded in retaining its existing client base as well as in attracting new clients. It has also educated and still educates their clients first before jumping into a new client relationship. Emblix Solutions with the passage of time has built and documented processes and templates for everything it did to ensure that work is consistently flowing across teams and clients. In this process, it has grown beyond its founder’s (Mr. Chaitanya Nandigam’s) bandwidth.

• Managing finances with promptness • Building new business development teams as and when required • Using small, core teams who serve the requirements of their specific group of clients • Workflow consistency among the teams and the clients • Retaining the top talent resulting in employee satisfaction and motivation • Recruiting the best and brightest apprentices or interns as future employees

The factors behind the longstanding success The reasons behind the company’s long-standing success are due to the following below mentioned factors• Ensuring consistent service delivery

Constant vigilance is a need rather than a strategy as in the case of digital marketing – constant vigilance involves keep tracking, experimenting, and always looking for newer ways to connect with your audience. It has been a backbone for the long-standing

success of Emblix. Their Oﬀerings Emblix Solutions, the quality digital marketing services provider focuses on • Search Engine Optimization • Web design & development • Mobile Applications • Digital Marketing services for industries across sectors • Social Media Marketing • Online reputation management As a digital marketing service provider, their brand-building campaigns involve direct advertising campaigns, sponsorship and in creating killer portfolios. The last but not the least, they use Artiﬁcial Intelligence or AI for instant brand building that brings to them a whole facet of creating relationships with the audience.

www.theenterpriseworld.com 25

The Most Innovative Business Leaders to Look Out: 2020

As and when required, they will add on new services to their digital marketing portfolio, as there is still a long way to go in the field of digital marketing with the evolution of new technologies like Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT. The company taking a step further with To take the company a step further in terms of their services, Emblix solutions believes in educating their clients or prospective customers about what their business process looks like, what results that they can expect and how soon they can accept these results. It has always educated them on how social networking platforms work and why a particular digital marketing strategy is the best for its clients. Further, they are in the process of using the services of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence as part of our digital marketing strategies. Mr. Chiatanya Nadigam – Empowering Innovations He is a first-generation hands-on entrepreneur. After completing his Master’s Degree in Computer Science, he worked for Embedded Systems Solutions Ltd as an Embedded Linux Developer to get on hands experience and prove his mantle as a Linux Developer for embedded real-time systems market. He is responsible for growing the company from just two people to more than 50 people and into a profitable entity. As a founder of Emblix Solutions, he helped Emblix solutions during its seven years of journey in creating a history of sorts in delivering quality digital marketing services and other allied IT services such as web development, web 26 June 2020

designing, E-Commerce, On-line reputation Management, and Marketing Automation services and other latest technologies in the process of its digital marketing path. Mr. Chaitanya is also involved in getting the company in shape for future trends in Digital Marketing Industry and product development. While talking about the need of innovation he says, “Innovation is the key to the business as it helps in resolving the key issues being faced by the customers or clients and helps in staying ahead of your competitors in the market race to stay on top of your areas of expertise. Innovation also helps in discovering new services, invention of new products that help in exploring new markets.” The founder of apple, the late Steve Jobs’ success story inspires him a lot. Words for rising entrepreneurs The responsibilities of an entrepreneur rest on these ﬁve pillars especially in the ﬁeld of digital marketing and these include • Building a sustainable, sellable and scalable business that means to ensure that my company will continue to grow at an exponential rate • Developing the best services that satisfy my customer or client needs and it also includes thinking about improvements on a day-to-day basis. • Continuous improvement of the business model resulting in continuous improvement and innovation in my business processes, services • Providing a healthy working

environment at workplaces The Workforce Emblix Solutions follows or adheres to providing in-house training programs to its employees that help them learn new digital marketing trends and technologies. It also conducts training and internship programs to train new hires for their first or second jobs. In addition, Emblix Solutions provides a great working environment, gives its employees’ encouragement, salary packages as per current industry standards, and offers consistent opportunities to progress in terms of rewards and appraisals. An overwhelming client experience Emblix Solutions has until now has revamped the online presence of more than 3000 websites through their team of digital marketers, website designers, developers, and programmers. They have clients like Star Hospitals and Aliens Group among others have benefited from their digital marketing services and as such encouraged them through their positive comments, and reviews that resulted in the further expansion of their client base. To cope up with the rat race out there, Emblix as a provider of digital marketing services believes in building a brand on strong business fundamentals required for running a successful digital marketing firm or agency. They understand about developing a healthy relationship with their valuable customers by comprehending their needs.

AsiaPay enables merchants to securely accept most popular digital payment methods from credit cards, internet banking and more on a single platform.

REGIONAL

SECURE

ADVANCED

Country operations and payment processing.

PCI DSS Level 1 compliant since 2006 and certiď&#x20AC; ed 3-D Secure vendor.

Anti-fraud tools, mobile-ready, real-time consolidated reports, big data.

INTEGRATED

RELIABLE

SUPPORT

Multi-lingual, multi-currencies, multi-channels, multi-cards, and multi-acquirers.

High service uptime of 99.9%+ and high performance.

Local account and risk operation support as well as 24x7 technical support in 15+ countries and regions.

www.asiapay.com

Upshot Metros

28 June 2020 Image credit:www.wikiwand.com

Houston

The Most Popular International Destination

The Apollo 17 command module www.theenterpriseworld.com 29

Upshot Metros

or business and leisure, living and commuting, Houston is one of the dynamic cities on the world canvas. With the proximity of the Southern Hemisphere and the infrastructure to meet the growing needs of many global interests, Houston has become an international location and one of the greatest cities in the world. Houston’s infrastructure is also bolstered by three airports, making it the sixth-largest airport system in the world and the largest trucking and rail system in the South, South Central, Midwest, and West America. More than 600 trucking companies operate from Houston, and two major railway systems operate 14 mainline tracks originating from Houston. Houston has a rich pool of highly-skilled, multilingual, multicultural workers. About 25 percent of adults have completed four years of college and are lagging behind the national average, while middle-age is three years below the national average.

30 June 2020

Houston, Texas is in East Texas on Gallstone Bay, near the Gulf Coast. About two hours from the Texas / Louisiana border. Houston’s oﬃcial nickname is “Space City” because NASA’s Space Centre is situated there. Houston was incepted by two New York land developers who purchased the land in 1836 and set up a city named after Sam Houston. IT was the capital of the Republic of Texas until it moved to Austin in August 19. In 1861, Harris and all surrounding countries voted to leave the Union and join the Union in the Civil War. A major oil discovery was made at Spindle top near Beaumont, which gave rise to the oil industry in southeastern Texas and Houston. In 1914, the Houston Ship Channel was built on the shores of Buﬀalo Bayou. In 1961, the Johnson Space Center was incepted at Clear Lake, south of Houston. The Harris

County Domed Stadium, later called the Houston Stroodom, was completed in 1965. Houston has many award-winning and internationally performing art groups and allows newcomers as well as residents of all neighborhoods to enjoy the music, ballet grace, opera passion, and theatrical performances for the entire event. Houston showcases its devotion to art through the perfection of art museums and critically acclaimed galleries. Near the center between Reliance Stadium and the city, the Museum District of Houston oﬀers several museums, galleries, and arts and cultural institutions, including the city's premier museum. Every year around 4 million people visit the institutions in the museum district. Spend a day in the museum district and get inspired.

Houstonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s infrastructure is bolstered by three airports, making it the sixth-largest airport system in the world.

More than 600 trucking companies operate from Houston making it the largest trucking and rail system in the South, South Central, Midwest, and West America.

Two major railway systems operate 14 mainline tracks originating from Houston.

www.theenterpriseworld.com 31

Upshot Metros

The Space Center Of all Houston’s attractions, perhaps the most popular is the Space Center. This huge complex is open to tourists, where they can pass shuttle carriers as well as lifelong replicas of the shuttle. There are many experiences like touching a rock with the moon and also learn about NASA’s upcoming projects like the Mars colonies.

Must Visit Places in Houston You can make the most of Houston’s fantastic shows and visual expressions destinations. Experience one of the numerous cafés accessible that oﬀers dinners in everything from South American to the Middle East and Vietnamese. To explore the diverse culture of Houston and to make new ways for your growth of business in Texas, A visit to Houston is a must!

32 June 2020

Preston Street Street art, or one that is popular as graﬃti, is a fury in Houston. Truly magniﬁcent creations can be found throughout the city. These colorful wonders embellish the numerous walls of establishments spread across the city, which will be a fun time for travelers to visit and see.

The Houston Zoo

Museum District

The Houston Zoo is a fascinating attraction in the city, responsible for attracting thousands of visitors every year. Home to over 000,000 exotic species of animals, the zoo has an education and information center for those who want to learn more about zoology and zoology. Reach giraﬀes, see sea lions, and understand marine life up close and personal.

The district is one of the largest cultural attractions in the city and is home to around 19 diﬀerent museums. Eleven of these are state-owned and free for all. Some of the famous ones are the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, Museum of Fine Arts, Children’s Museum, Contemporary Museum, and Holocaust Museum. Most museums are within walking distance of each other, making it easy to cover them in a single day trip. www.theenterpriseworld.com 33

Interview with The Enterprise World

n today’s world, we are seeing technology growing very fast; it has become a big part of our life. Due to technology, we are able to use many facilities and technology is changing the way we work. Technology has a major contribution in bringing the world to this new level. Education sector has changed a lot with innovative implementation of technology. With traditional processes it was becoming difficult to evaluate, to work on day to day processes which resulted in holding back the growth of educational institutions. With comprehensive technological solution offerings, WinUall has made its unique position in educational technology landscape. Their quality offerings are transforming the sector by adding simplicity and speed to day to day processes. In a talk with the master mind behind the long standing success of WinUall, Mr. Ashwini Purohit, let’s discover more about the company and their journey towards the success. • Tell us about the company. WinUall is an ERP, content and analytics solution for tutors and education institutes. Our SaaS platform helps in augmenting offline teaching through online content sharing, assessment, performance analytics, and personalization for students. Our solution also simplifies classroom management by digitizing payments, batch management, attendance, and communication with parents and students. We help institutes cut down time on non-teaching activities and increase engagement in/after the class 34 June 2020

leading to a better teaching ecosystem. • What were the initial challenges you faced? This segment is a bit unorganized. The biggest challenge was to convince the coaching institute owners to use our product and see the value. Once they start feeling the value of the product, it becomes much easier. Building the A-Team was also very challenging. Making your team believe in your vision and working with them days and night is what would take lot of eﬀorts for any founder. • Which was that point that triggered the growth of the company? Recently, IIT-JEE went online which created an uptick in our growth. Teachers now need a platform to conduct tests, analyse performance, and take recommended classes. Winuall was something which was exactly what they needed! • How have the company graphs changed since the foundation? Can you share a few statistics? Once we opened our platform for everyone, we saw a huge need in diﬀerent segments. • What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing

success? The success for our company is every single minute that we save of our clients using our platform and every single Rupee that our client saves using our platform. When I personally talk to our clients, I feel overwhelmed hearing about how are they using Winuall and making their coachings digital and efficient. • What are the products/services the company focuses on?How are your services different from those in the market? WinUall is an ERP, content and analytics solution for tutors and education institutes. Our SaaS platform helps in augmenting offline teaching through online content sharing, assessment, performance analytics, and personalization for students. Our solution also includes tools that help the institute to cut down on non-teaching parts such as fee collection, batch management, communication with parents and students. Our solution is different from other solutions in the market as we try to add value to the student side which improves the quality of education itself. We have not limited ourselves to an ERP solution which helps institutes in basic digitization. Our solution helps tutors engage students more than before, giving them quality content for practice, deep analytics, and personalization

Ashwini Purohit – Founder to improve students’ performance. By adding value to students, we can become indispensable for coaching institutes as students themselves will start demanding our solution. • How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your products/services? We aim to digitise every coaching institute in India and empower teachers providing them with tools that they need and make them focus on just teaching! • Is there any new addition to the list of products/services? Anything exciting you would like to share We are adding on a lot more features that will help institutes providing their students a virtuous learning system. • What do you think are the responsibilities of an

www.theenterpriseworld.com 35

Interview with The Enterprise World

entrepreneur? Being an entrepreneur is not an easy job! As cool as it sounds, it comes up with many responsibilities. You need to build a sustainable business, work on the product, ensure that our clients are happy and are using our product, our employees are learning every day, and at last, you yourself are working that you want to work on! • Can you please brief us about your professional experience? I have about ~4 years of experience in developing industry-level products. Over these years, I have been leading several developer communities including Facebook Developer Circle, Google Developers Group. I have developed these communities from scratch and led more than 80 people in the team. • What are the key achievements of your entrepreneurial journey? My journey at Winuall is a rollercoaster. Every day is a new journey with new challenges, opportunities, and new learnings. I have learned a lot in this journey. I have learned from my mistakes and failures that 36 June 2020

has made me a better entrepreneur. • How do you look after your employees? What makes your team unique? WinUall is a family to me! Everyone at WinUall is a family member and I do my best to provide them everything that they need. What makes us unique is the belief in vision. Everyone at WinUall carries same vision and work days and nights to make dreams come true!

make people’s life easier and simpler. I believe innovation is the key to success. • Whose business story do you ﬁnd the most inspiring? I admire Ritesh’s (founder-Oyo) early days when he himself went to hotel rooms and made them wonderful. His journey is really inspiring.

• Is there any special experience with your clients you would like to highlight? Recently, we received a text from one of our clients mentioning that he's using WinUall a lot to minimise physical connect during Corona Virus. A story like this is our real success!

• Constant vigilance- a need or a strategy? Please share your views. I feel it’s a need. As an entrepreneur, you need to be vigilant every day. You should always be prepared about something bad. Shortage of funds, leaving of a core team member, missing a huge deal. If you're well prepared for the bad, you're deﬁnitely prepared for the best!

• According to you why one should be innovative to stay ahead in the market race? In today’s ecosystem, there are hundreds of solutions available to solve a problem, and you need to work every day thinking the most eﬃcient and innovative way to

• It’s a rat-race out there. How do you cope with that? It’s actually better to be in such a race. You get to learn a lot from others. Their mistakes, their success, their innovations, every single thing teaches you how to become better.

The Most Innovative Business Leaders to Look Out: 2020

MS. SHEELA LUNKAD Scaling up Creativity

e, in the world of today, are experiencing unprecedented and random changes largely in the areas of Climate, health, and depleting natural resources. This is forcing the man to relook at his patterns of living and consumption; which in the last century have all birthed from industrial systems of production. This is impacting demand patterns amongst the new generation of consumers, who are questioning the dubious trade-oﬀ of choices made by industry in the pursuit of growth without looking at the impact this continuous growth has had on the planet and human health. It has led to a growing and gradual rise in the demand for sustainable and local produce, which is also designed and styled for global standards and quality parameters. This makes for a very powerful paradigm shift in the evolution of new consumer ecosystems. Markets are looking for newer ways to buy and no longer want to be forced into buying what industries and marketing companies keep dishing 38 June 2020

out to them. For the majority of our needs, we are now willing to wait for a better quality product that’s custom made for us and our speciﬁc needs. This limits enormous wastage and reduces overstocking considerably since stocking inventory is the core ingredient built into modern industrial supply chain management; designed to induce demand and produce in anticipation. Consumers are thus turning towards crafted products and smaller batches of making and consuming from handmade producers who can not only tailor the ideas into speciﬁc products but also ensure exclusivity and character to the same; thus ensuring relevance in contemporary times. For the consumer; it also means a new experience wherein he/she knows who they are consuming from and that their money is being spent in livelihood generation and sustainable equitable living for artisans and craftsmen spread across the world.

The single most contributor to this change has been technological advancements of the last few decades. Technology is famously the application of knowledge to the practical aims of human life or to changing and manipulating the human environment with the use of materials, tools, techniques, and sources of power to make life easier, more pleasant, and productive. The 19th century gave the tools of technology to the st industrial producer...The 21 century belongs to the hand producer. Traditionally the hand producer has existed in rural towns and villages spread across geographical boundaries with limited market access and knowhow of global contemporary tastes. The digital age has resolved this gap through various techniques that have helped educate and inform; evolving through systems of collaborative thought and execution. Collaboration is about ﬁnding new approaches to ordinary problems, the mixing of experiences, cultures, traditions, and techniques to create something

truly remarkable. Technology enables this interdisciplinary exchange of ideas connecting humans across lingual, cultural and geographical boundaries. The global consumer today is a buyer and a maker or a designer and the artisan too is a consumer with his own likes and dislikes. What if we put them all together in one plane? The marriage of technology, design, and craft is what Direct Create has worked towards. With more than 2 decades of experience working with craftsmen in the physical domain; the architect Promoters felt that the future lay in integrating the best of the physical knowledge of the craftsmen and the ﬁnest creative processes of the designers through a seamless information gateway on the cloud

that would beneﬁt all the stakeholders. This; we believe; is the future of consumption –batches of small and precise production spread across various villages and towns leveraging traditional knowledge and high-quality craftsmanship that meets and collaborates with markets directly. In short –consumers have the choice of creating their own requirements and making it happen with the knowledge available and creative energy deployed through processes and systems. We at direct create have established an omnichannel custom-built technology platform that enables local artisans to work with a network of designers and buyers to collaborate and co-create a handcrafted life across the world. The handicraft and handloom

sector in India is a 24,300 cr industry and contributes nearly 10,000 cr annually in export earnings. The 12th Five year Plan had projected it would become the largest nonfarm sector in rural India, swelling its workforce by 10 percent, doubling the output and exporting 18 percent more during 2012-2017 Many aspects of what informs DirectCreate’s vision are already in play — creating the base for the age of the individual to ﬂower. Internet paired with the mobile phone has made the world global and individual simultaneously. The rise and abundance of global platforms like Google, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb create the promise of a uniﬁed world business environment that’s also highly customizable to the individual's needs. The next band of evolution

www.theenterpriseworld.com 39

The Most Innovative Business Leaders to Look Out: 2020

Direct Create operates under the guiding principle that, collectively, we can makeGood things happen. It is with this principle in mind that they imagined a platform fueled by collaboration– a creative community united by a shared desire to push the boundaries of what is possible in the world of design. Here, old mixes with new, art mixes with technology and local traditions are merged with modern Techniques. We believe that when unconventional relationships are formed, itunlocks the possibility to create something extraordinary.

for the consumer space comes from optimizing the economy with the power of this connected world and creating new supply chains that harness the potential of this network and offer diversity to the consumers. Uber offers the flexibility of switching between a Rider and Driver, or Airbnb provides the ability to be a Traveller or Host. Each one of us today is a creator and consumer, we can choose to prioritize which persona we want to operate with and switch between them as per our need. DirectCreate takes this to the next level by expanding the persona into three the Maker, the Designer, the Buyer. Every person can exist across the three personas and change them from time to time. Barring the highly industrial fields like microprocessors or automobiles or hi-tech component manufacturing, most of the products we consume daily are customizable to our needs provided a robust ecosystem is created for this to be enabled. As members on the platform –people can seek out their choice of the Maker or designer from amidst the community. Once they find a producer who fits their personal needs; they can then share their requirements,.All makers on the 40 June 2020

DC platform are equipped with a complete backend and front end integration that supports customization. They can process many orders at the same time. For unusual or individual demands where the customer is not able to clearly deﬁne what they need, they can contact a designer from the platform; the Designer can create the product design and speciﬁcation for them and also recommend makers who can make it for them. The customer then shares that with the makers and Maker creates a custom product for them. Direct Create is an Omni-channel that connects local artisans to a network of designers and buyers to collaborate and co-create a handcrafted life across the world. Today we have access to 726 crafts of India and a pan-India maker network. Fostering a community of 15,000 handpicked artisans and designers, we are working towards creating an organic connection between makers, designers, and buyers. The Journey to Prominence Direct Create got launched 4 years ago as a technology platform to create a community of makers, designers, and customers. Over the years, the platform has evolved

considerably; now they also provide in-house curation to match their client's ideas with quality craftsmanship. Direct Create now operates out of New Delhi and Amsterdam. Direct Create operates in three service areas to connect makers, designers, and buyers and makes handmade crafts accessible to a wider market. • Project Management: They work with buyers and retailers to elevate their product oﬀering by planning and developing a unique portfolio of handcrafted goods. • Design Collaboration: They take a collaborative approach to design innovation, creating connections between interdisciplinary creatives to develop design solutions that range from premium products to experiential spaces and large-scale projects. • Production: They orchestrate the end-to-end development of project life cycles with a specialization in design, manufacturing processes and project execution from concept to delivery. An unmatched leadership Direct Create is led by Sheela Lunkad and Rajeev Lunkad, trained architects and crafts enthusiasts.

Together, they bring decades of professional expertise in working with exemplary craftspeople, designers, and consumers. Rajeev has worked on wideranging culture linked design projects, both at the micro and macro scales. He is one of the primary designers and the Project Director of the JalMahal Project that helped restore the JalMahal Monument and revive the ecology of Man Sagar Lake in the Indian state of Rajasthan. In terms of international engagements, Rajeev has considerable experience. He worked as a Principal Architect with the Asian Heritage Foundation, which won the award for Scenography of the Plaza at the Universal Forum of Cultures 2004 held in Barcelona - an event jointly organized by the Spanish and Catalan government with the city of Barcelona, the United Nations as co-partners. Mr. Lunkad was also a part of the Silk Road Festival as the technical head of the project. The Silk Road festival, held in the national mall in Washington D.C was produced in coordination with the Smithsonian Folklife Institution, Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project Inc, the Aga Khan Trust, and the Asian Heritage Foundation. In 2014, he also became part of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program [IVLP] on the theme of Managing Cross Border Water Resources. Sheela has more than two decades of experience in the area of design and sustainable practices in areas ranging from craft revival, textiles, handcrafted design space,

architecture, and eco-sustainable hospitality. She has headed the home & lifestyle Strategic Business Unit of FabIndia Retail for over a year. Sheela was also the CEO of DAH Jaipur, one of the subsidiary companies of Fabindia Overseas (India's largest handicraft chain), working with craftsmen and vendors in the state of Rajasthan, India. DAH Jaipur, a part of a Harvard Case Study, is owned by several stakeholders including the artisans and the employees. The company grew almost 300% during the 2.5 years’ tenure. She was responsible for designing, sourcing, coordination, and production of some of the architectural and textile components of Smithsonian folklife festival, which was held in the national mall in Washington D.C was produced in coordination with the Smithsonian Folklife Institution, Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project Inc, the Aga Khan Trust, and the Asian Heritage Foundation. With an in-depth knowledge ﬂow of artisanal communities, Sheela has helped craft 360-degree design solutions, building ecosystems for self-reliance, innovation, and growth within these communities. All of these are interwoven with the core idea of expanding and celebrating cultural heritage and making it relevant to today and the future. Some of their successful projects

be a ‘Dining room’ pavilion which consisted of utilitarian handicrafts belonging to 25 craft-clusters from all over India, in place of the usual craft or region-speciﬁc presentation generally associated with crafts. • SBU Management of Fab India: Direct Create managed the Home and Lifestyle SBU of Fab India, India’s largest handicraft-based retail company. We developed a range of unique collections across various product and design categories. One such collection was called the JalMahal Collection, inspired by the JalMahal, a palace in the middle of the Man Sagar Lake in the state of Rajasthan, India. This was carried out by a digital collaboration with an international designer, based out of UK. • Souvenir Store at Red Fort: Direct Create is developing its ﬁrst retail rollout, the store will be located at the Red Fort, Delhi. Red Fort is one of the most visited monuments of India’s monument-based merchandise project. With the Red Fort Monument as a point-ofinspiration, we are developing a range of products for a souvenir shop. For this, we conducted background study and research and drew inspirations from the age-old materials and skills of Red Fort. Based on this, we are developing select merchandise products with upgraded and new-age designs which attract urban buyers.

• Swadesh bazaar for Reliance Foundation: Direct Create curated the best of Indian arts and crafts and presented the audience with an immersive retail experience. We curated theme-based and utilityoriented stall. An example would www.theenterpriseworld.com 41

Did you know?

DID YOU KNO ?

42 June 2020

Readers Digest, Lakme, Nerolac all were owned by TATA. TIAGO car earlier named ZICA but TATA renamed it as it was sounding like ZICA Virus. Samsung contributes 20% of the total GDP of South Korea. Samsung is also a full-time weapons manufacturer. IMDB, Zappos, Junglee.com is owned by Amazon. Google was originally called BackRub. Coca-Cola owns a whopping 20 brands that generate more than $1 billion in sales per year. The Volkswagen group owns Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Audi, Ducati, and Porsche. Pizza Hut, KFC & Taco Bells are owned by one company called “Yum Foods”. Pizza Hut was the rst company to launch online ordering & the site still exists. Nokia incepted as a paper manufacturer rst.

www.theenterpriseworld.com 43

44 June 2020

he current era is the time of the digital revolution, because even from an object to an identity of a human being is digitised. Bar-coding about the information of a product or an Aadhaar card with a human-related identity is a contribution of the digital revolution. In a world where everything is digitised, if a business does not fully utilise the digital platforms available to them to improve their business stance, it would become an underutilization of available opportunities. If we look at the stats of the market today, about 80% of shoppers prefer to do online research before buying any product or taking service. In this scenario, Omnia Digital is making eďŹ&#x20AC;orts to fulďŹ ll all digital needs of businesses and empower by providing comprehensive cutting edge solutions under one roof!

Shwetha Prasad

Creating brands with a purpose and passion www.theenterpriseworld.com

The Most Innovative Business Leaders to Look Out: 2020

Omnia’s Founder & CEO Shwetha Prasad and her team of experts strive for innovation that can add speed to their client’s businesses.

corporates and big brands that wanted sales, lead generation or brand awareness. The Early Days

The Company Initially, there was really no Omnia is a 4-year-old full-service company or anything, Shwetha agency, fully bootstrapped by started off with just her, for one and a half months making and sending Ms. Shwetha Prasad. She is an out proposals. She would turn up at electronics and communication 10 AM every day, make a bunch of graduate and always dreamt of client calls, send proposals, take starting a business and not being a meetings but nothing really panned part of the one run by her father. out. She says, “It was very She always wanted to start a challenging that it was just me, and business on her own and shuffled I had to push through all the No’s I between a couple of jobs. Shwetha was getting.” There would be a lot started off with an MNC and was of proposals that would go out with then a part of the core team of no response, no avail. The another startup that later went on challenge was to power through the for investment evaluation. She No’s all by herself as she What is most important is that you didn’t have a constantly question yourself, whether team in place or not you have added value to that yet and she business, and if you are meeting your had to turn up deliverables. The business you have to work with the same taken on should be taken care of like amount of zeal it’s your own. and passion to exited at the 2 year mark from the convert the first client. That start-up and moved on to another eventually did happen but those digital agency as their COO. That’s one and a half months- two months when she realized that digital and was indeed a massive challenge for creative were her passion and that the company. lead to the creation of Omnia Digital. Then the growth started...

and at any given point they were settling into a comfort zone, Shwetha would ensure to push themselves to get a better office, bigger clients, better bigger and stronger team. Shwetha gives a shoutout to her team for the company’s growth and two very special girls that worked with her– Aadharshana and Parul who were and still are very much a part of the Omnia family. They were key in envisioning a growth for Omnia and in laying the foundation for what it has become today. The efforts of passionate people and their approach to never look at any client as a transaction but a relationship are the vital factors behind Omnia’s Success. Their Offerings Services that Omnia offers are split into three verticals, i.e Branding, Tech & Digital. Branding is all things creative, tech is your website design and development, and mobile app design development, e-commerce portal design development, Digital is all things digital- social, email, search, etc. Based on the client and their needs, they come up with a custom plan on utilizing platforms that would benefit for the client.

‘‘

Taking innovation to the table Omnia has a lot of different clients from a lot of different industries that have come to them with business ideas that they have had to refine and take forward from their name to logo to their digital asset. Omnia has also worked with old school SME’s that wanted to rebrand and go digital. She has also worked with a lot of well-known 03

MM 2020

Shwetha says “The growth graph’s starting point comes from a very personal place of me not being comfortable or conforming to anything mediocre. My go-to the mantra, cliched as that sounds, is Mediocrity is the worst thing that can happen to anybody.” At every stage that Omnia grew, they felt that they should continue to grow

Digital Marketing today is evolving to be a data analytics play. It’s no longer about putting pretty creatives. There is so much data feedback from each of the digital platforms we are dealing with. The future of digital is going to be a lot of data analytics play and just not all about driving likes with

appealing creatives. Omnia possesses the power to categorize based on their income to their age, to their region to the recent interests. The entire digital behavior of an individual can be gathered and analyzed. It is all about utilizing it correctly and creating a funnel with it. Analyze and read the data and play with that to create ROI through digital. Digital has come a long way from where it has started. It started off just as social media platforms where you get eyeballs on your product and today, we have lead gen, Whatsapp conversions, tracking, and remarketing, there is so much going on in every stage. The future definitely is entire data analytics in digital . Plain and simple, digital is dynamic and challenging, always keeping us on our toes. Every day we wake up to find that a platform or an algorithm has changed. If you are not up to date or not current/handson, it really does not work. That’s why at Omnia, I get my hands dirty with some of the campaigns, some of the designs because the trends are so quickly changing that if you don’t keep up with it, you have lost. Looking Ahead Shwetha says, “Omnia is a 360 degree full-service digital agency and they already have most of the services under the big umbrella. What I am excited about is tools and software that aid in data analysis and process the same.” This particular software they are working on helps them process all the data feedback that they get from across all platforms, instead of

analyzing it platform wise used by consumers. The data shall be curated and analyzed for you to improve targeting and to achieve better ratios. This has definitely been on her mind for a while, definitely cutting edge. Shwetha Prasad - A leader with a revolutionary vision After completing her college degree, two paths opened up for her – either to follow her dad’s business or make a name for her on her own terms. Shwetha began her journey with a major consultancy firm post which she started the pursuit of her passion and joined the core team in another startup and played an integral role right from ideation to making it an organization with 100+ employees within just a year. Post this she moved onto becoming the COO of a digital agency, a move that changed her life and future because it made her identify her love for digital and drove her to start Omnia Digital! The Workforce Shwetha Says “I would start off by getting rid of the term employees because it’s a term that irks me. We are a team, and as cliched as it does sound, we are a family. And like any family, we have our ups and downs.” The biggest way Shwetha contributes to taking care of the team is to invest in their growth as much as her and the company’s, so she tries her best to ensure they don’t stagnate and they also grow alongside her and the company is one of the biggest ways.

vigilance Shwetha says, “With regards to the team, more than vigilance I would say constant mentoring and guidance is key to building a team. It ensures that your core value is carried through the company. I am somebody who is completely against micromanaging in any form. I believe that anyone who walks into Omnia should come in with a passion for what they do. If you come in with that passion, you will deliver results because you are driven to doing what you do. I don’t believe in strict vigilance of what’s going on, I do believe in mentoring people and shaping them into becoming better but that’s as far as I go” Overwhelming Client Experience There are a lot of brands that Omnia has worked with. They have worked with start-ups, SME’s, corporates that come to them where they can take care of everything from naming to logo to building that brand, that business and taking them to the market and seeing sales coming. That whole journey of building that brand just enhances the whole client experience. “I’ll stay true to my heart that start-ups are always close to my heart, having worked in so many startups myself and it being one of my most special experiences” Shwetha commented.

Talking about the need for constant www.theenterpriseworld.com

Interview with The Enterprise World

nation rich in biotechnology can lead the world. The ﬁeld of biotechnology has always been the forefront in the welfare of the nation and its economy. This sector has played the role of the messiah in an epidemic like COVID 19. Technology has guts to shape the future of mankind and biotechnology is being a medium for it!

In the same context, we had a pleasure to talk with Mr. Praveen Gupta, MD & CEO at the Premas Life Sciences (PLS). PLS is empowering the health field across the world with its undisputedly most advanced cutting-edge technological offerings. Have a read to an interview with Mr. Praveen Gupta, and get known to the Premas Life Sciences’ quality offerings and his views on the. • Tell us about the company. Premas Life Sciences (PLS) is a young, dynamic, and focused organization introducing gamechanging niche Genomics, Cell Biology, and Biopharma technologies to boost innovative research and diagnostics in India. We are also the knowledge partners to several reputed research institutes and hospitals, enabling them to set up core genomics facilities with complete support at all fronts. • What were the initial challenges you faced? The foundation of Premas was laid down when ‘start-up culture’ was not a buzz word. Two major obstacles that we faced were attracting talent as well as customers because for both the 48 June 2020

groups we were a new, unknown, and untested brand. Our vision for the future, our passion coupled with the technical prowess helped us establish faith in our customers ultimately conquering these hurdles down the line. • Which was that point that triggered the growth of the company? I think believing my gut instinct to introduce Next Generation Sequencing in India at a very nascent stage was the “it” point. Partnering with Illumina was a revolutionary moment for us. It helped us catalyze the growth of genomics in our country exponentially. • How have the company graphs changed since the foundation? Can you share a few statistics? We have fortunately been growing at a CAGR of 40%. We achieved an increase in revenue per existing customer and have been an integral part of building the genomics space in India from scratch to approx 450 Cr industry employing 3-4,000 people. Established 10+ service providers ensuring Indian samples remained in India. • What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing success? The most essential ingredient is our values and belief system which we have managed to keep intact throughout our growing years. Our mantra has always been a customer-centric approach and it has paid oﬀ well when we witness customers advocating us as to others in the market. Another very important key to success is that we always had the eye for identifying new breakthrough technologies early in the game and creating a

need instead of simply serving the need. • What are the products the company focuses on? How are they different from those in the market? Our portfolio boasts of diverse cutting-edge tools serving multiple research and diagnostic applications in the field of Genomics, Cell Biology, and Biopharma. Our products are unique and stand apart in the market on account of their uncompromised quality, highlevel automation and throughput, globally reviewed and published in leading research journals. • How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your products? First of all, we believe that we have so much to embark upon to accelerate the potential of our existing product lines. Secondly, deeper penetration of existing markets with newer applications alongside creating new markets and territories by expanding our horizons and thirdly, constantly looking out for more exciting technologies to partner with. • Is there any new addition to the list of products? Anything exciting you would like to share? Yes, we have recently partnered with a very innovative company, Codex (earlier known as SGIDNA). Their platform BioXP 3200 is the World’s first and only fully automated gene synthesis platform based on their patented Gibson’s assembly technology. It can undoubtedly revolutionize the vaccine/Biopharma development efforts undertaken by our top pharma companies and bolster the

MR. PRAVEEN GUPTA A game-changing leader in the ďŹ eld of Life Sciences www.theenterpriseworld.com 49

‘

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

“Made in India” vision.

• What do you think are the responsibilities of an entrepreneur? So, I personally believe that an entrepreneur is no different than a leader and it is the sole responsibility of an entrepreneur to create more entrepreneurs by demonstrating a path and instilling inspiration apace with adding value to his/her stakeholders including employees, customers, shareholders and the society as a whole. • Can you please brief us about your professional experience? I have been building my knowledge and experience in the industry for 27 years now. I cherish my humble beginnings right from being a frontline sales guy with Ranbaxy laboratories in the In Vitro Diagnostic (IVD) market to switching in the Life Sciences market and holding leadership positions at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Bio-Rad Laboratories, DSS-Imagetech and finally being part of the founding team of Premas Life Sciences. • What are the key achievements of your entrepreneurial journey? In my adventurous journey so far, what gives me the thrill is being the part of this journey in which we have seen the emergence of Genomics as an industry in India and thereby interacting with some of the best minds in the Indian Life science and Diagnostics industry. We were the very early adopters in the segment and each drop of effort 50 June 2020

‘

Interview with The Enterprise World

- Steve Jobs has been the foundation of this vast ocean we see today. • How do you look after your employees? What makes your team unique? We like to call ourselves as ‘a new age start-up’ and proudly boast of our inclusive culture, where every member of the team is open to sharing ideas, suggestions, and even challenge the routine. The perfect blend of technical expertise and creative thinking as well as a combination of experienced professionals and passionate youngsters makes our team truly unique. • Is there any special experience with your clients you would like to highlight? While every meeting, every event, and every customer talk is of utmost value as it has only added to my learning but I will never forget my ﬁrst interactions with IGIB during the starting phase. Our customers have always been our focal centre and we can proudly say that we have transitioned from vendors to partners because of the trust that we have established and made a brand name that they can reckon with, hence making our customers our biggest marketers. • According to you why one should be innovative to stay ahead in the market race? We’re literally living on the wheels. To be innovative is to be unique in our own way – that’s what makes one relevant. To lead the race, one has to develop a change in

perspective and be able to “think outside the box” that differentiates them from the crowd. It puts them on a pedestal. • Whose business story do you find the most inspiring? Other than Narayan Murthy, I am truly inspired and touched by people in my vicinity who reflect an infectious zeal and passion, understand their purpose and move forward unabashedly to follow their dreams. • Constant vigilance- a need or a strategy? Please share your views. I feel that being on your toes is the need of the hour yet a core strategy to keep you ahead because constant vigilance helps you to keep up with the extremely dynamic and the high paced markets, not just keep up but also be able to make strategic, time-efficient and valuable decisions to beat the volatility of the markets that you have to survive in. • It’s a rat-race out there. How do you cope with that? A whole lot resides in your perception and attitude, either you can let it get to you and fall for the rat race or enjoy what you do to such an extent that leads you to raise the bar. For me, I love being challenged, muddling through problems, and finding creative solutions to stay competitive and relevant. Pressing one’s nerves every once in a while, helps us be effective and efficient in the longer run.

The Most Innovative Business Leaders to Look Out: 2020

MR. VIKRAM AKEPATI President and CEO

“

If you want to go fast, go alone and if you want to go far go together.

ining has been prevalent since pre-historic times and over the years has evolved to contribute to the economy. Mining activities contribute to a major part of the global economy. As traditional as it can be, the mining industry too has undergone modernization. And what has played a signiﬁcant role in the growth of the sector are the economic reforms of 1991 and the 1993 National Mining Policy. This has given rise to several mining companies. Emprada Mines and Minerals is one such company that particularly deals in providing API Grade Barite Powder and Barite Ore. Founded in the year 2016, the Emprada is breaking the traditional mining standards by incorporating technology which has signiﬁcantly transformed the businesses. The 52 June 2020

company deals with quality barite products. Their infrastructure and logistics solutions have helped the company to stand strong in the mining end product landscape. Mr. Vikram Akepati, President and CEO at the company and his multi-skilled team is transforming the businesses as well as contributing to a booming economy with hard and smart eﬀorts.

Powder as per the API 13A and other industrial standards. Incorporated in 2016 with Head Quarters in Austin, TX, and Production Plant in Andhra Pradesh, India with over 50 fulltime resources, they have made exponential development in the exports of Barite starting with 7000 MTS in 2016 to 150000 MTS in 2019.

Emprada mines and minerals is an API Certiﬁed Company, Directly sourcing from the world’s single largest barite mine extended over 225 hectares with more than 50 million tons of reserves, they are specialized in providing highquality Barite Powder (up to 96% BaSO4) without any toxic materials to their clients. It is of premium quality and purity, which makes it all the more appreciable. They conduct strict quality tests in their state of the art laboratory to ensure the delivery of high-quality Barite

Journey since Inception The initial hurdles make a beautiful journey ahead. Emprada also faced many initial challenges that helped them to learn, improve, and create a unique position in the market today. It needs guts to run a business in a landscape where there are many competitors who are running their businesses for more than 40 years. With innovation and collective smart eﬀorts, Emprada took baby steps in a market with a holistic vision to become the number one barite powder provider. Initially,

Emprada Mines And Minerals Vision Emprada’s vision is to become a market leader and provide excep onal quality barite mineral to current and prospec ve customers by capitalizing on our Mutual Commitments, Loyalty, Integrity, and Respect for each other. Mission The focus is ﬁrmly upon business development, innova on, and providing support for each new emerging interna onal opportunity. They believe in working with their suppliers and customers on an open, honest, and transparent basis which helps to build mutual trust and long term rela onships.

when they started they struggled to bag an order to produce 4000 MTS per year. But down the line after 3 years they are able to produce 1,50,000 MTS per Year. Being in a stagnated market this growth itself tells the story behind. Here are some points that highlight Emprada’s growth until now. • Financially the company has crossed 12M USD in sales in 3 years with 100% increment YOY for the last 3 years. • Emprada’s exports crossed 150000 MTS in FY 2018-19. They were recently awarded “Star Export House Certiﬁcation” • They have built 5 manufacturing units and employed 50+ full-time employees. One of the highest in this business! • The company is awarded an API Monogram – Spec 13A certiﬁcation by American Petroleum Institute,

USA (Highest recognized certifying agency for Barites in the world) for having the best quality process. • The company has achieved ISO 9001- 2015, ISO 14001-2015, OHASAS 18001-2015 for our quality standards. Their comprehensive offerings Being one of the top companies in the mining industry, Emprada has created a significant position in the market with the utmost range of comprehensive offerings. Emprada has developed its own testing and quality control for delivering the high standard end product. The company has fully equipped state of the art laboratories, staffed by highly qualified and wellexperienced technicians for barite sampling, testing, and analysis. The company’s R&D teams along with the technicians always make

genuine efforts to improve the quality of the end product. The lab is equipped for sampling and sample preparation, chemical analysis, flame photometer tests, sieve test, determination of specific gravity and bulk density, and hightemperature fusion tests. A highly skilled team of Emprada does a random sampling of the powder throughout the production cycle to maintain the standards. The company offer Barite PowderAPI Grade (4.10 SG & 4.20 SG), Barite Lumps (4.2, 4.1, 4.06, 3.99 SG or as specified by the client) Emprada’s Infrastructure and Logistics • Barite Factory with five high speed 4 roller pulverizing mills • The in-house production capacity of 15,000 MT/Month • Covered warehouse & open

www.theenterpriseworld.com 53

The Most Innovative Business Leaders to Look Out: 2020 storage area of 270,000 sq.ft for stocking • State of the art laboratory practices for superior quality control • Laboratory with full testing capabilities as per API 13A • Material Handling Equipment like Forklifts, Payloader, Excavator, Fleet of Trucks, Hydraulic & EOT Cranes • Manufacturing facilities are equipped with a variety of Customized Packaging solutions • Production facilities are located closer to the Port for easy transportation of jumbo bags • Tied-up with transporter companies for shipping of material to the seaport • They offer FOB from Indian seaports (Chennai and Krishnapatam) and CIF depending on the requirement. The factors behind the longstanding success of Emprada Every business needs to be updated with the latest technologies and transform accordingly to stand strong in the market. Emprada's team keeps a close watch on the changing industry trends by attending industry conferences as well as following the business magazines. The company keeps mining the data related to exports, geographies, shipping companies, and govt. /Industrial policies. The R&D in an established business with cutthroat competition, is the potential edge that they have over others and they have achieved this by innovation and doing things differently. The company has set up a State of the Art API Certified (Best in the industry) Quality Analysis Lab with qualified analysts to perform rigorous testing on the material to 54 June 2020

qualify for exports and maintain highest quality standards. The Workforce – Company’s Valuable Asset We all know the famous saying “If you want to go fast, go alone and if you want to go far, go together”. Unless you hear your workers out and address their issues and keep them motivated, visions do not turn into reality. Emprada provides periodic training to their staﬀ that gives them challenging opportunities and helps them to perform better. Many times, handholding might be required to make them learn and they won’t hesitate to extend this support to up skill them.

market/product insights to the customers. This makes them customers trusted partners. The company adheres to the highest industry quality standards (API Spec 13A) and globally accepted 3rd party quality analysis companies to test and certify their products before delivery. Needless to say, any client expects nothing more than this. In addition to this, the global expertise gained from Mr. Vikram’s corporate background is helping to gain the company an extra edge over other existing competitors.

The company grew from 3 members to 50 members in 3 years. There is always that satisfaction to see locals get employed and guided in the right direction. With the help of regular trainings and Quality policies, the employees are now equipped with the knowledge and expertise to face the daily challenges and come up with an optimal solution. This inclusive growth is the secret of the company’s success.

Mr. Vikram Akepati – A Leader with holistic vision Mr. Vikram Akepati, President and CEO at Emprada Mines and Minerals, being a qualified Engineer passed out of USNWAustralia and having worked in Fortune 50 companies in the USA for over 15 years in decision making roles, have gained the expertise to handle the clients effectively. Though, everyone sources Barite from the same mine; the clear differentiators are the processes, quality aspects and rigorous testing. Further, seamless integration of different departments such as operations, logistics, port cargo handling, and export management gave them the edge over others to provide real-time data and on-time delivery to the end customers. He brought in the technology to the age-old existing process to improve product and process efficiency.

A forever promise Emprada commits to the quality and delivery of what they agree upon. They believe in providing eﬀective client engagement, optimal reporting, and realistic

Mr. Vikram says Elon Musk of SpaceX and Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo Rooms inspires him a lot. He admires those who have rational thinking and progressive thought process.

100% of the employees that the company has are local to the area where the company is located. The company is securing local employment and uplifting their living standards. Emprada has been generously contributing to the local schools and helping children to get a proper education.

www.underarmour.com

BUILT TO BREAK THROUGH Available in Men’s, Women’s, and kid’s

From the Editor

PURPOSE OVER PROFIT

56 June 2020

group of customers, employees and brands that will want to survive and embrace a purpose-driven strategy to their business.

It has been said earlier and people will most likely keep repeating the fact that over the next few years there will be rapid changes in the industries and the way everyone works. Thanks to the Artiﬁcial Intelligence, machines will now be able to think tens and thousands of times faster than the human brains. The Blockchain technology has made the world even more transparent. The big data is enabling the companies to provide individualized, custom experiences.

How to adopt your business to lead with Purpose?

he goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.” – Simon

Sinek

The Generation Z We have started the revolution in businesses. Fondly called as the Gen Z, ours is the generation that is directing all its business decisions to a stage where purpose matters more than the proﬁt. Gen Z is all set to challenge the fundamental ways in which the businesses operate. It is the generation that has put behind the obsession with feature wars, product iterations and chasing of the quarterly results. You might want to question what the business is worth then? Well the answer is clear! The Gen Z is driven by purpose. The questions crossing their minds are something like- Why does a company choose what they are doing? What is the purpose behind their existence? And as we move forward, this Gen Z will grow into the most powerful

The companies that would succeed in the future would not need more products or better features; although they are a given. But the most important thing they need to focus on is a better purpose. Unfortunately, most companies are not driven by purpose. They are driven by the quarterly results. They focus on expanding into the growing markets. Their goal is iteration and not innovation. While it is important to set goals and targets for your company, it can't be the only thing that drives your business. Because while planning out goals and targets, what you forget is that you might actually be left behind. Sure expansion is not that bad of an idea, but it will give you a proﬁt growth for the next 3 to 5 years. But then what happens after that? Let us take the example of a tool company. What if instead of running the company for proﬁts, the tool companies led their business with the purpose of 'helping the people build their dreams'? Wouldn’t this be a noble purpose for a tool company? Instead of just being ‘a tool company’, it will have a purpose.

furniture décor ideas for people with new homes. If at all they expand, they can have a line of luxury hotels and help people have their dream vacations! See? Running a company with a purpose will still have something to look forward to than just being a simple tool company. This is the reason why a purposedriven strategy is a must. Simon Sinek has already said, ‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy it for WHY you do it.’ Only the brands that are lead with a purpose-driven strategy have become remarkable ones. And the most popular example of this is Netflix. When Netflix was first launched, there was not as much of an internet presence as there is now. But in its initial days, the company worked only on DVD sales and rentals over the internet. But then eventually, they transitioned into a subscription-based DVD rental model. But as the influence of internet increased, the company has transitioned again by offering the DVD content of its library via streaming. Get the point?

This could also help the company expand and they can enter any which sector when they go with the purpose of helping people build their dreams. They can create the

If you drive your company with a purpose, it becomes easy for you to go with the trends, to transition into what is demanding. This will keep you in the market, and for which you won’t have to change the idea of your business. Instead just transition into something the trend has!

www.theenterpriseworld.com 57

www.atempo.com

preserving data ecosystems