The Reluctant Entrepreneur

The Reluctant Entrepreneur

How I Did It | Ramesh Grover

Thirty years after he was cajoled into starting out on his own, Ramesh Grover continues to believe that he’s not ‘business-minded’. His company’s growth certainly tells another story—Grover has built The CMS Group into one of India’s leading IT and outsourced business services provider. Last year, the company totted up a turnover of $100 million. Its 21,000 employees serve more than 700 customers in India alone, from nearly 100 offices across the country.

Today, we draw over $100 million in revenue. Still, I don’t think I am a true entrepreneur. I don’t have an unending appetite for growth.”

I was born in Lahore in 1945. My father worked in the Northern Railways. Though I was young during the Partition, I remember the chaos. My father had just bought a house in Lahore when riots broke out over Punjab. We had to move to India with nothing but our clothes. After a week of travel, by train and on foot, we reached Jalandhar, and were put up in a relief camp.

We made our way to Delhi, where we got a 10-ft-by-10-ft room—quite a luxury after the cramped quarters of the camp. Eight of us lived in that room for two years. Then, my father got back his job, and we moved to a house. It was from here that I completed my schooling at DAV, Daryaganj.

I was a naughty child, and a poor student. When I was about 13, my father asked me what I’d like to become, and I said an engineer. He smiled and said that if I didn’t improve at school, I would probably end up selling chhole! That probably left an impression as my grades improved. In my higher secondary exams, I did well enough to get into BITS, Pilani.

I enrolled for mechanical engineering, but electronics was my passion. I’d attend electronics lectures and miss my own classes. I was quite a celebrity on campus because I could make radios on my own. You could say it was my first entrepreneurial venture.

After I graduated in 1966, I came to Mumbai to look for a job. IBM was already a big name, and I dreamt of working there. My first job, though, was for L&T, where I worked for six months before IBM offered me a job. I joined them at a princely salary of 600 per month, and stayed on for 13 years.

I became an entrepreneur by chance. In 1974, India imposed FERA. I was 29 and ready to go abroad for a plum posting. But, things were changing, and fast. By 1976, IBM was fed up of the roadblocks being created for US firms here. By 1977, the Janata Party government asked IBM to leave the country. However, the Centre also wanted computers to come to India, and offered licences to NRIs to start firms here.

Luckily for me, a group of entrepreneurs with such a licence knew me from my IBM days. They asked me if I would join them to run their company. At IBM, I was known as the man who could fix any machine.

There was a ready market for a company that could repair and solve computer problems. IBM had sold a number of computers  to firms across India. And, few knew those machines as well as I did.

However, I was scared. No one in my family had been in business—it signified risk. I preferred the comfort of a job. The NRI group convinced me by agreeing to pay me five years’ salary, irrespective of what happened to the firm.

In August 1976, I started CMS. I convinced two IBM colleagues to join. We were India’s first computer maintenance firm. I had no idea what to call ourselves, so I thought of a simple name, Computer Maintenance Services. None of us knew then that it would be such a large organisation in three decades. I can confess that I was convinced that I would have to go back to a regular job after five years.

Fate obviously had other plans. In 1978, IBM left India completely. Suddenly, clients realised that there weren’t too many companies which could help repair their machines. They knew of my ability to fix problems and it was natural for them to come to CMS.

Some of our early clients were BSES, Premier, Philips, ACC and Glaxo. That was more than 30 years ago. Today, we draw over $100 million in revenue. Still, I don’t think I am a true entrepreneur. I am not your average numbers’ man, nor am I what you call a ‘risk-taker’.

We did grow through the 1980s, when CMS expanded both in size and geography. In 1982, we set up our manufacturing facility, and two years later, we acquired Systime, a UK-based firm. When we bought our office space at Nariman Point, it meant we had arrived. Now, we are into traffic engineering, system integration, ERP, cash management, energy management, training and education, e-governance, smart Cards and IT consulting. I sometimes cannot believe we employ 21,000 people and have 50 training centres.

We have achieved many firsts. We were pioneers in the plastic card business in India. We print 25 million personalised cards each year. Whenever you see an ATM, credit, healthcare, phone or payroll cards, chances are they are ours. Over 45 per cent of Indian plastic cards are made by us. We are also one of the big four infrastructure management service providers, and control 50 per cent of the cash logistics market. The technology behind those synchronised traffic lights that you see at busy intersections across our cities is ours.

Of course, the journey has not been without hitches. The Systime deal itself was a close shave. Recently, many of our businesses slowed down during the recession. CMS Info Systems, a key business, went through a rough phase, till Blackstone acquired a 60 per cent stake in it.

I have learnt many lessons in business in these decades. I had no clue about company law when I first went into a partnership. I found out the hard way. I had a disagreement with my partner and wanted him out of the company. I had to also learn to become a team man from being somebody who was more at ease talking to machines.

The acquisition of Systime in 1984 was a big moment. It was a tough acquisition. We had almost sewn it up the first time (or, so we thought), when at the eleventh hour, another UK firm offered them a much higher valuation. We couldn’t match the sum. Because Systime was also British, I feared they would prefer to stay in the UK. I flew down to the UK to meet the Systime board. Over several days, I convinced them to sell to us. I still cherish the moment when we finally signed on the dotted line.

As an entrepreneur, I have always gone with my gut instinct. There have been failures, but that’s what business is about. My biggest weakness is that I am not a commercially-minded man. It probably sounds ridiculous. But, I am sure we would have grown 10 times faster had I been more ‘business minded’. It’s not like we lost contracts or deals. But, I don’t have the unending appetite for growth that other Indian entrepreneurs have shown. The only reason that I can think of is that I never had a mentor, at IBM or at CMS.

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