Call him a doyen of the hardware segment in India since his firm was among the first few to put up a hardware manufacturing facility in India. Call him a pioneer as his firm was amongst the first few to do distribution of well-known global IT brands like Intel in India. These and more sobriquets fit rightly and lightly on the shoulders of K Vijaya Raghavan, Chairman & Managing Director, Advanced Micronic Devices Limited. His has been a journey extraordinaire but away from the limelight. A soft-spoken person with a brilliant academic record and someone who tried many things with AMDL in the IT space, Vijaya Rahgavan opened up about himself, about AMDL and his role models in this free-wheeling discussion. Here are a few excerpts.

Tell us a bit more about yourself.

I did my Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1963 and went on to do a Masters at Purdue University, USA. After graduation returned to India and joined Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) as Design Engineer in 1967. Within three years joined Blue Star as Manager – Data Products where I was responsible for marketing and support for the entire range of HP PCs in India. After a five year stint, the entreprenuership bug bit me and I became a part of a group which started a firm called Micronic Devices wherein I served as Director-Technical for over six years. Around 1982, felt the need to tap and exploit the opportunities presented by the IT segment and incorporated Advanced Micronic Devices Ltd. (AMDL) and have since been the Chairman and Managing Director of AMDL. We currently have revenues of over Rs. 45 crores.

How do you see your long stint in the IT Industry?

Having started in the late 60’s I have been witness to almost four decades of history and happenings of the Indian IT Industry. In fact as you would be aware some of the biggest names in Indian IT would have started either around this time, a little earlier or later. Thus I have also had the opportunity to closely work with some of these stalwarts which I cherish the most. Having seen the various cycles I believe that the IT industry has always been an industry in change or in transformation. The only difference is that the rate has accelerated over the past few years or this decade.

What would you consider as major milestones and as your biggest contribution to this industry?

Let me answer the biggest contribution bit first. We were the first to distribute Intel in India and were highly successful in penetrating customers and markets for Intel in India. It was the extent of this success and the potential felt that was to an extent responsible for Intel deciding to enter India itself later. I need not overemphasize the importance of Intel’s entry to the growth of the industry and having catalyzed this is what I see personally as AMDL’s biggest contribution.

Moving onto milestones, there are a few which I would like to mention here. The first one is that we were among the first few to market our own branded PCs in India to some success for over a decade between 1986-1997, since then it has been discontinued. Second is our distribution arm which has a reputation for leading-edge technology products like AST/Dell/Digital and Microsoft. The third which is not major is our going public which happened in 1994.

Who are your role models or which personalities do you admire the most?

It might look evident but Narayana Murthy and Azim Premji are two people whom I personally admire and consider my role models. Both of them are radically different, adopted different practices/routes but have built two of India’s most successful companies between themselves. I have had the fortune of seeing Narayana Murthy in close quarters and in action and am still amazed by the simplicity and vision of him. I think future entrepreneurs would do well to emulate some of their values while striking out on their own with their own approach.

Which would you consider as the biggest challenge that taught you the most?

It is a tough question to answer but I share it here as it might serve as a lesson for other entrepreneurs. Though we started early and had a good management team, we did not capitalize on that advantage. Instead we focused our efforts on lots of areas within IT as well as healthcare distribution which meant that our efforts and management attention was thinly focused. This also resulted in being occupied with many areas and allowed little time to focus on the future. Thus despite being there we could not simply scale up and by the time we tried to the market had moved beyond considerably and also changed in the process.

Where is AMDL today and the path ahead?

I think AMDL today is in the right shape and focus today. We have clearly identified areas where there is potential like IT services and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which are also scaleable. The road from here looks better and expect to see some real growth.

Your advice to entrepreneurs?

I think the days of grand artistic impressions of the future and being able to build an edifice around it are over. You must have a clear revenue model today, your space clear. My suggestion is once you have these, adopt some of the values which made Murthy and Premji successful and add some more of your own improvisation. Go at it and you should be able to build a solid and successful organization.

Which Indian IT company will be the first to cross the US$1 billion magical landmark?

It is generally hazardous to predict in this industry but my gut feel says it would be one of the following four – Wipro, TCS, Infosys and HCL (Combined). Of the four Wipro has a better probability, but that is my guess.

Issue BG5 Aug01

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