You can always spot a professional leader apart in the crowd.
It is not only their dressing style, attitude, conduct, personality, aura, but their innate nature that gets connected with your inner sense, and instantly you know that you are looking at a leader.
Information Technology is one such industry, where for expert services and complete solutions, you always need genuine professionals because only they will bring that positive difference to your IT-dependent business.
So, when we were looking for ‘Business Achievers Making a Difference – 2022’, we came across Mr. Senthil Kumar (SK), Founder & CEO of ITEZ Global Solutions Pvt Ltd. We knew that we had met a real professional leader.
Making of The Leadership
A master of computer applications and a post-graduate diploma holder from ISBR Business School, SK has over 15 years of versatile experience in the fields ranging from sales, management, and planning to implementing strategies for multi-lingual regions across the nation.
Along with ITEZ, he is also the founder of SYSK Innovations Pvt Ltd, and Re-cart – the latest talk of the town business in Bengaluru. He was also the founder of ASM Info and Venture Information Technology, along with carrying out many leadership roles – from mid management to CEO level in the past.
When we asked him about his vision and mission, SK said that he wants ITEZ to become the leading IT solutions provider pan India, and that their goal is to make a positive difference in client’s businesses by providing an excellent experience to them.
He informed us that ITEZ was conceptualized and formed in 2018 as an extension of this vision and mission to provide end-to-end IT solutions for enterprises and consumers.
“To enhance the capabilities of enterprise process and security structure, we offer customized and complete IT solutions for enterprises of all sizes and verticals. We work with everyone, from start-ups to industry biggies, so our understanding of enterprise IT challenges is wide and deep,” he said.
“Our core team has 15+ years of cumulative experience in IT sales, solutions and services. This experience makes ours a technically sound team, which is fully-equipped to take care of all of your product and service requirements,” he added.
“We give door-to-door service, as well as we have adapted ourselves with updated technology to meet the ongoing demands in the market. Our contracts help save maintenance costs and reduce the breakdown time,” he added further.
He also said that when it comes to safety from unexpected failures and repairs, they are the customer’s preferred choice because they offer 24*7*365 days’ support. Their services are highly reliable and planned as per the client’s products. And also, they offer it to those clients who are using competitor’s products.
The company’s motto is – Your requirement, our responsibility. “And we strive to live up to it by providing exceptional customer service,” he proclaimed.
“We have partnered with several OEM’s such as Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Dell, and Acer to provide authentic IT products to our customers. We also deal with Rentals, and we are working on our E-Commerce department, which we will be launching this year,” he revealed.
Rise of a Professional
SK has very humanistic thoughts regarding topics like company culture, celebrations, people, clients, and vendors.
He said, “When it comes to our company’s culture, we believe in two things, that is, ‘We walk the talk’ – we speak about being a team and a family. We believe in it wholeheartedly, and ‘Action speaks louder than words’ – once you get to know my team, you will not feel like it is just a company but more like a professional family. You will get more than what you expected if you are a person working in ITEZ.”
On celebrations, he said, “Our culture is unity in diversity, as we celebrate the small efforts to the biggest ones. We don’t exclude the losses as they are the biggest teaching force for my team, to move towards their goals, no matter how many times they fail or make a mistake. Therefore, here at ITEZ, every day is a festival to celebrate each other’s failures and achievements.”
The company prides in having optimistic and focused people who always love taking up challenges, finding ways to enter newer markets, creating a new client base, and reaching impossible heights. The company welcomes new ideas and suggestions and encourages its employees to work as a team and not as an individual.
He had very promising words for his clients like, “Providing our customer with the best of products and services at a reasonable price, is something that makes our customers only avail products and services from us. And at the end of the day, both our clients and we are happy.”
ITEZ keeps all its documents up-to-date, which makes the vendors to not only buy and sell products and services to the company, but also builds trust. “Just as they supported us during the pandemic, we’ll keep supporting them too,” assured SK.
ITEZ’s key aspects are its Clients and Vendors. They are more of a family than just a business; hence they are the company’s strength as well as weakness. The company takes pride in knowing that it supported its clients and vendors even during the pandemic.
Leader Meets the Challenges
During the initial weeks and months of the COVID-19 crisis in the country, it was very difficult to stay afloat as the economy was crumbling. No one could predict that the year which was supposed to bring good news ended up being a year of struggles.
SK accepted that it was a challenge to help his people navigate the demands and supply of the products and services requested by the clients and vendors during the pandemic. But his team said that ‘this time shall pass too’. So, they met the uncertainty and overcame it together as a team and, most importantly, as a family.
He reminiscences that the pandemic time was a learning experience. “During COVID-19, we carried laptops/desktops manually to our third-floor office, that too through the stairs and then did the packaging and delivering all by ourselves. And now, post COVID-19, we are proud that we have opened three new offices and grown to heights that were unimaginable. We have expanded our office, which has many departments like service team, logistics team, enterprise team, rental team, etc.”
He believes that COVID-19 is a blessing in disguise for him and his team, as it made him and his company the way he envisioned it to be, or more than what he had envisioned. In merely two years, the company reached the Top-18-List in the industry. This is exponential growth for a start-up like ITEZ that started and survived due to the efforts of just four of them during the pandemic.”
Leader Beats the Challenges
When probed about how they handled the challenges, he said, “The challenges created by the pandemic were not easy to handle, especially for the businesses that were trying to reopen. Whenever many micro and small businesses felt a sense of urgency to get their business back to the normal as soon as possible, there were new guidelines and revised practices laid down by the government, which we strictly followed.”
And for beating those challenges, he said that they took special permissions to work from office during the lockdown, following all the norms to work from the office and sharing up-to-date, relevant information about COVID-19 symptoms and disease prevention.
He said that their main focus was an organized, safe environment for working. They purchased medical supplies and equipment, like antibacterial products and thermometers. They also self-monitored their employees’ health, and regularly disinfected their workplaces.
They further ensured that all their employees were vaccinated and wore masks at all times. They even arranged for passes for the employees commuting by motorbikes, and pick-and-drop facilities for the employees who used to travel by bus.
ITEZ also officially aligned with vendors who could not avail passes for delivering products to the client’s place, as a delivery partner so that those vendors could survive the pandemic.
They also made sure that the employees commuting from office to home and vice versa followed the same safety measures at home by constantly communicating with them.
The Pro Leader’s Tech Vision
SK’s tech vision is futuristic. According to him, AI’s need is recognized by all the businesses today for their business growth. However, many of them never move beyond the experimental phase, when it comes to fully using AI’s potential.
As per his experience over the years, the definition and concept of AI have evolved significantly. He describes it as a simulating experiment in human reasoning abilities with the help of advanced computer systems, which can learn and reason, interpret, and make decisions similar to humans.
He says that AI, which was already there, had been suddenly propelled by the pandemic so much that our future anticipation of many years became a reality in few months. And according to him, the behavioural change it brought is tremendous.
“But to grasp the future impact of machine learning, and the role AI could play in our futuristic society, we must first focus on the technology at the heart of this revolutionary automation renaissance,” he opines.
Words of Wisdom
“Be curious because curiosity is what makes you see things that others do not,” SK advises and adds Albert Einstein’s quote – “I’m neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.” Adding his thought to it, he says, “So, let the curiosity within you soar to greater heights.”
According to him, “One should be aware that there are obstacles everywhere. Sometimes they are in the form of people. Sometimes they are in the form of stupidity. They are all hard to accept, and they can kill motivation. It takes someone with the passion, maturity, optimism to get past that.”
About his motivation, he says, “As a leader and a business owner, motivation for me, comes from working with people on things that I care for. So, don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know or by the fear of failure. We make a living by what we get and we make a life by what we give. Therefore, believe in yourself and your abilities but don’t make it a reason for your downfall. Because, if leadership serves only the leader in the short term, it will look good, but later on in the long run it will fail, as ego-satisfaction, financial gain, and status can all be valuable tools for a leader, but if they become the only motivations, they will eventually destroy a leader.”
He reasons it with a philosophy that you are truly leading only when service for a common good is the primary purpose. “Believe in your team because when people are financially-invested, they want a return. But, when people are emotionally-invested, they want to contribute”.
The Professional Leader’s Future Mission
SK feels that irrespective of whichever business one is in, one has to deliver the best value to their customers and vendors to succeed in the long run, especially during times like the pandemic. “If you can not precisely identify what value you add and deliver on it, it is going to be hard to sell your products or services in the future,” he says. “But I don’t mean that one should be doing charitable work to add value to the world or to your customers. Simply speaking, one needs to understand how their future strategy adds value to all the stakeholders. As without the value component, it is harder to sustain success.”
Therefore, ITEZ’s aim is to reach out to tier-3 and tier-4 cities, and provide them solutions and services. “Why should only big cities enjoy these benefits provided by us?” he argues.
The company believes in being a cost-efficient brand, rather than just being a luxury brand. For them, their client requirements are their responsibility, and they try to make sure to always provide them with the best, as they are the ones who have made the brand that ITEZ is today.
Therefore, ITEZ has tied up with many OEM’s, due to which they can provide their clients with the best of their products and services at an affordable price range.
