'Espirit de Corps’ is the principle of cohesion Dilip Ramachandran, the CEO and managing director of Zoft Solutions, live by. The French word means a sense of common interests and responsibilities that keeps an organisation and its employees loyal to each other and work together for a shared objective. Dilip believes that it can only happen if the leader is clear about his purpose. “It is the clarity of the entrepreneur that eventually percolates down to the team and brings in a sense of
purpose of working together,” he says without batting an eyelid. As someone who is at the helm of the affairs of one of the fastest growing product and service-based company in Kochi, Dilip brings a lot of experience to the table. Before co-founding Zoft Solutions, he was working in the top IT companies for 12 years.
A decade of experience in corporate life has helped him set certain principles that paved the way to the success of Zoftsolutions. Zoft Solutions was conceived in Kochi’s startup village in 2014 with two other friends Shine Saseendran and Siji Mathew. With further support & guidance of our friend and Businessman K J Paul we later revamped the company in 2015
for full-fledged operations. “ The first two years had many teething issues. The struggles of not being recognised in the market had its own disadvantages. More than domain expertise, it was meeting the pre-qualifications that brought hurdles to us,” remembers Dilip as he explained how much time he
invested assembling the blocks required to build recognition in the market. With persistent hard work, the team secured a digitisation project from GCC for a Defence Ministry. This gave the necessary
confidence to further invest in Business Development which paid off quite well. The company went on to secure clients from Europe, HongKong, Kuwait and Canada . Even in the domestic circuit it was win-win , with the opportunity to work as an IT partner with Kochi Metro Rail Limited.
ZoftSolutions started off at the start-up Village in Kalamassery , where the thrust was on research to create a generic Mobile Application Engine which would enable us become front runners in creating Mobility Products. “A year and a half later we scaled up operations to provide IT services as well,” says Dilip.
By the end of 2015, they moved into their new office space at a prime IT Zone in Kakkanad. There was no looking back since then. ZoftSolutions has rolled out over 4 products across varied domains in the last 2 years in the mobility space alone. This year they look forward to launch their first product in IOT space. On November 1, 2018, the company set up their first dedicated International office in Canada to provide services to the largest healthcare group in that country. Today, with close to 70 employees, ZoftSolutions provides cost-effective solutions for business agility within organisations that want to use digitisation as a springboard to expand their business footprint. ZoftSolutions major work is into providing IT services. “80 per cent of our focus is on IT service
and 20 percent of our focus is on product designs ,” says Dilip.
He streamlined the company’s sub-vertical that provide end to end services in the field of healthcare, retail, education, automobile as well as manufacturing and distribution. “Based on customer requirement we bring in domain
expertise and we deliver. This is how we cater. We have built a good alliance network that helps us bring in the best minds to the table. All these verticals are headed by industrial experts,” explains Dilip. Dilip credits the success of the company to the methods it adopted to sustain employee integrity. He believes that productivity can be achieved in many ways. “While behavioural motivation and providing incentives remain key factors in keeping the employees driven towards a common goal, ZoftSolutions believes that the most formidable concept is to inspire employees from within, by aligning them with a sense of purpose of the management” he quotes. Every day Dilip chats with his team heads for few minutes and discusses their action plan for the day and at the same time seeks accountability of the previous day’s action. “All this is done in a very casual manner,” he smiles. The team heads are called as hunting packs. “It’s inspired by how the lions hunt their prey in packs “, he points out. The process has been proven to enormously increase productivity without the need for micromanaging the affairs.
ZoftSolutions has also stepped into the arena of emerging technologies like AI, IOT, Data Science
and Blockchain. When asked about the subtle art of balancing work and family life, Dilip says his family has been extremely supportive of his venture. His father, Ramachandran Pillai, an NRI and
his mother Santha Ramachandran imbibed in him the spirit to learn and keep ethics in business.
His two children Ananya and Aditya ensures he balances his time well between home and office.
His wife, Kavitha.C.P who currently handles the portfolio for Microsoft Technologies also joined the company quitting her job in Tata Consultancy Services. “For entrepreneurs, it becomes difficult if the family doesn't understand why their partner is away for a long time. Hence, Copreneurship helps partners to get on board with what is happening in the company. I have been encouraging Kavitha to take up portfolios. She started with handling a single project and has now comfortably moved on to handling multiple portfolios. She does a good job of it as well,” He smiles, “Copreneurship gives freedom to make deals happen.”
(Published in Corporate Champions' Supplement, The New Indian Express, South India & New Delhi along with The Morning Standard, January 28, 2019
link: http://epaper.newindianexpress.com/1999923/The-New-Indian-Express-Kochi/28012019#page/22/2
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