Times News Network, January 12, 2007

DRIVING DOWN the western express highway on a Sunday morning is generally a thrilling experience. But, when the man behind the wheel happens to be juggler: hands synchronising the steering and two mobile phones, shifting gears; feet tap dancing the clutch and accelerator pedals - all one can do is pray. For Ramesh D Grover, founder, CMS Computers, India's largest privately held IT firm, being a speed demon or a juggler is routine. RDG is in his late 50s now. The consensus is that CMS should have been another Wipro or Infosys by now - even bigger perhaps. Opinions differ: some say that unlike Infosys, Wipro and Satyam, which marketed themselves almost exclusively to customers outside Indian shores, CMS focused on the untapped Indian market. Now, the Indian market is the fastest growing market in the world with IBM, HP and every other global vendor focusing on India. There's another opinion: RDG is too hands-on , a style that hobbles aggressive managers, who are expected to get business quick and big.

Those who know him will say that RDG's problem comes from his brilliance as a technician. When he was with IBM in the 1970s, a colleague of those days reminisces, besides his penchant for pushing his Fiat to the limit, RDG earned a following among his peers as the guy who could fix any problem. Give him any of the bulky, complex, vacuum valve beasts called computers in those days and he would get it working. "He would throw everything at a problem, even when all of us would give up. RDG would get down and fix it himself," says RDG's former colleague.This,considering that RDG's graduated not in electronics, but in mechanical engineering. It's something RDG likes to boast about: "Even my professor at BITS, would tell the electronics students -there's this guy in mech who is better than all of you."

RDG has single-handedly taken CMS from an IT maintenance provider to a Rs 800-crore IT services major that provides infrastructure services, software services and IT-enabled services. CMS has subsidiary companies: Securitas for cash-management and delivery services, and Systime for offshore services. In infrastructure services, CMS builds and maintains IT infrastructure including ATMs for banks. While working with the government to build electronics for traffic management solutions, RDG realised there was nobody to physically manage the traffic lights. So, he built a business around managing traffic systems across the country. Under its IT-enabled service, the company has bulk printing for utility services. The card division makes access cards, credit cards for almost every credit card company in the country . CMS is the largest company in the country in these segments.

CMS is now looking at leveraging these businesses for global delivery. Says RDG: "Some of the outsourced services that we provide in India, are so cost competitive that we can provide them anywhere in the world. We can roll it out even in Asia where other Indian offshore service providers are not competitive." Keeping costs down is something RDG is almost fanatic about. 'Anti elitist' is the word he prefers. He plans to leverage CMS' leadership position to make a quick, strong mark in global offshore outsourcing for infrastructure and IT related services. He's looking to raise fund for CMS' next round of growth though the private equity route.

If speed, capability and dogged focus are what we judge entrepreneurship by, RDG will be the right beacon to lead CMS to newer shores.