Role Model: Manojkummar Garg, COO, Taashee Linux Services

Manojkummar Garg, COO, Taashee Linux Services, is a great admirer of the legendary Dhirubhai Ambani and his six-word philosophy of business.

Manojkummar Garg took his father’s entrepreneurship to the next level but in a different domain altogether. After completing his BCom from Osmania University in 1992, he could have continued to support his family businesses of sanitaryware, a travel agency and an Indian Oil dealership, but, motivated by his friend Arun Subramaniam from SAP Labs (Bengaluru), he instead decided to pursue a career in IT.

“In 2000 I earned a Masters in Computer Science from Adam Smith University, US. I completed my third (last) semester as an intern with SAP, Germany, and was subsequently absorbed by the company as a developer,” informs Garg.

He returned to India in 2001. In 2002 he joined his friend Abhishek Dutt’s company ELX Linux as Regional Manager, South, where, among other things, he provided consultancy for open source projects funded by Mavcap, a Government of Malaysia initiative. ELX Linux culminated in Taashee Linux Services in 2008. The subsequent rise of the Hyderabad-headquartered Taashee has been spectacular. From a turnover of Rs 50 lakh in FY2008-09 Taashee is now a Rs 10 crore company with a branch in Mumbai.

The beginning

With his pre-sales and service expertise in open source technology solutions, and his experience at ELX Linux, Garg along with Dutt started Taashee with an initial investment of Rs 20 lakh, equally contributed by both partners. “My stint with SAP provided me deep understanding of software development; I acquired planning skills and a value for time and punctuality. These skills helped me in operations and sales at ELX. Dutt was in charge of the technical side of the business,” says Garg.

Anticipating that open source would take off in the coming years, in 2008 Taashee ventured into services and selling Red Hat subscriptions as its Ready partner. Recalls Garg, “In the initial days we found it hard to get business for open source tech solutions and services. People did not realize or appreciate the value of enterprise open source solutions. We also found it hard to find employees willing to pursue a career in open source platforms.”

But Taashee’s patience slowly paid off. “Our partnership with Red Hat helped us get leads and pursue projects,” says Garg. “We stuck to one principal, and Red Hat also supported us as a loyal partner. We took on several small implementation projects to earn credibility in the market, then penetrated deep into our customer base.”

The company got a major breakthrough with two projects outsourced by Red Hat in 2008. Taashee executed Red Hat cluster implementation projects at the AP Tourism Department in Hyderabad and Cyprus Semiconductors in Bengaluru worth Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh respectively. “The successful implementation of these projects endorsed our status with Red Hat, and enabled us to generate more leads and turn them into real business,” Garg adds. Also in 2008 the company bagged a project valued at Rs 15 lakh to implement open source technologies and maintain the DR solution at Azingo.

In 2009 Taashee completed a 1-month virtualization project at Bilcare Research to implement the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) advanced platform with integrated virtualization and clustering technologies, the MySAP business suite of applications, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft SQL Server; this generated Rs 11 lakh as product and service revenue. The company also executed a 1-month clustering middleware solution implementation project, generating revenue of Rs 10 lakh, for Future Bazaar, Mumbai. In the same year Taashee generated Rs 30 lakh from a data center project to implement 200 RHEL for servers with clustering solutions for Etisalat Telecom on behalf of Tech Mahindra.

Current business

In FY2010-11 the company doubled its revenue by recording a turnover of Rs 10 crore compared to Rs 5 crore in FY2009-10. Of its 2010-11 revenue, 70 percent came from Red Hat and JBoss subscriptions and software solutions; services and training contributed 20 percent and 10 percent respectively. The company’s current clientele includes Tata Communications, Tata Teleservices, TCS, Tech Mahindra, Coca-Cola, Cibil, Crisil, CCAvenue, Euronet, Lupin Pharma and LifeSpring Hospitals.

“Due to the slowdown in the global market in 2009, in 2010 many companies moved to cost-effective software solutions that added value to open source solutions. To increase our client base, we opened a branch office in Mumbai and grabbed projects from the Tata Group, Cibil and Coca-Cola. At the same time, the inclusion of more service contracts added to our bottomline,” informs Garg. Such commitment helped the company to earn the Advanced Partner status of Red Hat for its platform and middleware products.

In 2010 Taashee bagged a 3-year managed services project from Tata Communications to manage its JBoss middleware servers. The same year the company completed an application consolidation project (worth Rs 20 lakh) to establish a private cloud for TCS .

To enable easy tracking of a project’s progress and to maintain customer relations, Taashee has implemented a hosted ERP system from Workforce Track. Notes Garg, “The system has increased our productivity by almost 40 percent. It enables us to streamline our processes and track our progress. It offers our clients access to real-time information about the progress in their projects; it provides them a documented scope of the work, and the opportunity to raise any issue. This facilitates clarity on the progress as well as easy sign-off.”

The company has also established an enterprise-class blade center in Hyderabad as a center of excellence to offer software solution demonstrations through Webex and Zoho. Its customer support center, with 10 dedicated technical resources, provides 24x7 telephonic and online support to its managed services customers. Besides, there’s “Taashee Research Lab, which is an internal lab where technical resources deliver research work including digging new open source tools,” Garg informs. In 2010 Taashee was recognized as the most committed partner for Red Hat in APAC and recently as its Top Partner India 2011.

Future plans

Taashee intends to attain revenue of Rs 15 crore in FY2011-12 and more than Rs 100 crore in FY2016-17. Apart from open source tech solutions, the company plans to focus on consolidation, virtualization and cloud projects. “We partnered with VMware in 2011 to offer virtualization, middleware and cloud services to our customers. We also have plans to tie up with companies such as SAP, Salesforce and Amazon,” Garg discloses.

The company plans to establish its offices at Bengaluru in December this year, at Pune and Chennai in March 2012, and at New Delhi, Ahmedabad and Surat by the end of 2012. “By increasing our reach across the country, we want to increase our customer base by leveraging our CRM for lead generation,” explains Garg. “We also want to address the government vertical in a planned and full-fledged manner rather than by relying on sub-contracts. We have plans to register with NICSI and bid for government projects.”

On a personal note

Admiring Dhirubhai Ambani for his ‘think big, think fast, think ahead’ business philosophy, Garg considers the late industrialist to be his role model. “He dared to dream, started a business from scratch, and took Reliance to heights that are envied by businessmen around the world.”

In his free time Garg loves to watch Hindi movies and listen to old Hindi film songs. His favorite movie is Teesri Manzil starring his favorite actor Shammi Kapoor.

Garg provides financial support to the Bhagwan Mahavir Sanstha which provides artificial limbs to the physically handicapped. “I also find peace by offering meals and financial support to various old-age homes.”

He is enthusiastic about traveling to Mauritius, and finds spending time with his family a perfect weekend. He wishes to someday own a Mitsubishi Pajero.