Truly effective maintenance is proactive. It stops failure modes from arising by preventing the causes of failure. Instead of fixing a failing plant, the focus becomes plant wellness: ensuring life-long machinery health and well-being.
This is the future of the heavy industries – an advancement that can detect equipment problems and failures before they occur. Tardid’s augmented intelligence platform Brainbox delivers this by integrating the knowledge based decision support for predictive maintenance.
Understanding such machine essentials, the fascinating leader, Niladri Dutta, CEO of TARDID has given some insightful views highlighting the influence of predictive maintenance solution trends which help their clients to explore the diverse ways of autonomous structural and machine health management.
- How did your company’s journey as a preeminent brand begin? What was the underlying bedrock idea behind incorporating the company?
Most successful entrepreneurs have one thing in common, it is the place they begin. Apple started out from a garage, Facebook was the work of college students. TARDID started its journey from CCD. The idea was simple: to solve an age-old problem with the help of modern technology, a technology which just doesn’t give insights but also decision support with root cause analysis at the right time to ensure sustainability of the assets.
- What are the key aspects that demonstrate the uniqueness of the company?
The idea itself is unique, including the name. TARDID is just not a name but an acronym for “Time And Relative Dimension in Data”. From the very first day, we were certain that we would build a “Technology Product”, which will resolve the age old problem of machine related uncertainities. We have strived hard to build Brainbox, the platform which combines the power of machine learning and cognitive computing. The platform makes the machines intelligent enough so that they can cry for help when in need. And finally an Indian product which provides subjective to objective expert system.
- Tell us about yourself as a person, your educational background and as an entrepreneur. How do you use your skills to run your company above and beyond your competitors?
To keep it simple, I prefer to take lead only when my team needs me but rest of the time I empower them to make decisions and run the show. It is all about empowering and entrusting the team as no great company is built by a single person, it requires teamwork, it needs people to take ownership and consider it as its own. TARDID, even with its first employee, always could bring the sense of ownership in each one of them, which made working fun, and success a combined goal to achieve.
An engineer by education, I have learnt through the process of life, experimenting and learning what to do and what not to do.
At TARDID, we are one big family, who fight, argue and finally agree on a consensus after hearing all parties and choosing to keep only “TARDID’s” interest as that of the utmost importance. In true sense, it’s about TARDID being an individual entity and everyone, including the founders, are just its employees working towards a common dream of excellence.
- How do you see your entrepreneurial journey till date? Could you name a person/mentor/book/ who has had a tremendous impact on your entrepreneurial journey?
Inspiration is always within, you just need to ignite your internal fire and be ready to work hard. Elon Musk inspires me, because of his persistence in achieving success. His relentless efforts help me visualize how we can always perform better than what we did yesterday simply by continuously trying to achieve perfection.
The most significant inspiration for me is the Murphy’s Law, as it continuiously pushes me to look beyond the predictable and plan my technology for the unpredictable.
- What is the biggest risk you have ever taken? What have been some of your failures, and what have you learned from them?
Life is all about taking risks, in my case I have taken many, some small and irrelevant and others, life-altering. The biggest risk was quitting a comfortable job and starting the entrepreneurial journey with TARDID when my finances were not in the best shape. My decision not to take help from family for raising the funds for the longest time. To put everything at stake to ensure we drive TARDID independently without being questioned. Accepting that failures would happen and we would have to overcome and yes, we did.
Failure is a very subjective thing, for some success and failures are measured by report cards or salary or designation, etc.
For me, failure is when I quit trying and thankfully, that day hasn’t come till now. However, there have been ups and down which have taught me great lessons of life, like financial planning for self and the family, so that when you choose to take the biggest risk, money would not be a concern. I am grateful for a strong family relationship which ensures no matter what I do, they stick with me through my decisions and support me.
- To what do you attribute your success? What motivates you at difficult/down times?
My family, hard work, and belief in my team and technology. When we are down, we all hustle together and start working harder. When the downtime comes, that’s the most crucial time to identify who is there for the long run to work hard with you. We take this time to stand up and take actions to ensure we succeed.
- How would you describe your entrepreneurial skill in a sentence? What is your favourite aspect of being an entrepreneur?
Bad experiences teach us about good ones. The daily challenges which an entrepreneur faces are the most exciting part. Be it a simple issue which is out of our control, or a complex situation, it keeps us striving to overcome the barrier and move forward towards success.
- What would you advice to your fellow peers to successfully carry their work functionalities? How do you encourage creative thinking in your organization?
Be honest with whatever you do and most importantly, with oneself. If you commit, then deliver or else if there is a delay, inform in advance, as once the time is gone even the right reason becomes an excuse and you appear as an escapist.
To encourage creative thinking, we empower the people to think and commit mistakes, because nothing teaches like mistakes. Learn from the mistakes, but don’t repeat the same mistake twice. Make new mistakes every time. At TARDID, we believe each one, irrespective of their qualification and experience, can contribute effectively at all levels, the management teams believe in being good listeners and helping the all teams effectively carry out their ideas and improvise the ideas only when required.
- Is there any book or movie you would like to recommend to the budding entrepreneurs? What advice would you like to give them?
I don’t read a lot of books but I do follow the quote, “Life’s not about waiting for the storm to pass… it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” – Vi Greene
One would never know unless one tries, don’t be afraid to fail, just don’t quit till you succeed. If you believe in your idea then stick by it, till you make it successful.
- What measures do you take to ensure to grow and develop as an entrepreneur every day? How do you see yourself growing in the next five years?
Read every day, know about what affects me, my business and my eco-system. As an entrepreneur, it’s extremely important to be aware of everything that surrounds the success of my company.
Five years down the line, all I see is working harder to keep the customers of TARDID happy and being happier for TARDID being recognized as a Technology Product Company globally.
