Face to Face: Renowned Industrialist reflects with Vishal Shah

Rajkot, India, world’s 22nd fastest growing city, undisputed-ly Auto-Parts capital of India, is a home to amazing entrepreneurs. With popular demand, this is my another interaction with a Renowned Industrialist hailing from Rajkot, He is credited to have put Rajkot on world map as a center of Metal Engineering and a reliable global supplier of CNC machines, sophisticated automobile components, pumps, and heavy industrial goods. 

There is something common among these accomplished leaders, that is their unassuming, simple and humble way to make the conversation interesting and inspiring. I was hosted at his Farm House over an all milk Kathiyavadi style Indian tea served in the Gazebo with Kathiavadi “Gota”. I had a memorable 45 minutes reflection on why his enterprise depends on BLACKbox as a mission critical device and what value it has contributed to his enterprise.

I thank him for allowing me to share this conversation without disclosing his name, which is a brand in his field. I will address him as Sir in my flow of conversation. In the interest of time, I am summarizing the conversation.

Here is my candid discussion with him…

Vishal:
Sir, I was informed by my team that you decided to invest in BLACKbox against the advice of your IT advisers?

Sir:
That’s true. I almost exercised my Veto, and that too, for all wrong reasons. You won’t believe that I did not know what BLACKbox does. It started like this. We were setting up a factory in Himachal Pradesh with 150-200 users. Project report required to budget IT. Our IT advisory team came up with a budget of approximately INR 50 Lacs (USD 70,000) for number of Servers, Microsoft Licensing, Firewall, Storage, Backup System, End Point Security, etc. 50 Lacs was not a big deal compared to investment we were planning for the new facility. I was OK and sanctioned.

On the same day, I met my school friend for almost 50 years, who runs a small company in Rajkot. I casually informed him that we are setting up IT for new facility. He told me that you should evaluate BLACKbox which can minimize the investment. He vouched for its benefits, too. I was just laid back on this advice until I met your Business Head in Saurashtra. He surprised me by claiming that your INR 50 Lacs of investment can be brought down to as low as INR 15 Lacs. Honestly, I did not trust him. But I was impressed by your company’s credentials, as an Indian company, recipient of many awards and portfolio company of CIIE-IIM, Ahmedabad.
Next day, when we had a meeting to finalize on IT budget disbursement, I don’t know why, but I put a note and informed by IT team and advisers submit a report on why we should not buy BLACKbox. Probably it pushed them out of their comfort zone and they seriously evaluated the product and reported that we can serve the purpose with BLACKbox and can minimize our investment.

That’s how we invested in BLACKbox. For us, it was saving hardware and software cost on discrete IT components and we went ahead.

Vishal:
That’s interesting. I sense, you invested BLACKbox for minimizing IT investment and not for what it actually does. What happened then? I am informed that your IT team is exhaustively using all features of BLACKbox.

Sir:
True. It happened by itself. This new facility was committed to a German global automobile company. As we set up the plant, there were a series of inspections by them under our Technology Exchange Agreement. They are very strict on Information Security and Data Protection. Their inspection and audit of IT systems left us with a long list of requirements to comply with their Information Security and Data Protection practices. This time we involved a technology adviser from Synersoft as what all we had was BLACKbox. To our pleasant surprise and relief, everything in the list was complied with, be it, Data Leakage Prevention through USB, Email Attachment, Internet Session or be it Data Loss Prevention by providing for recovering from accidental or intentional data deletion, ransomware or disaster. This list covered all devices like servers, laptops, mobiles, tablets, desktops for Information Security and Data Protection Practices.

Wonderfully, BLACKbox complied with them on all devices… What else do you expect? Good things happen to good people, ha ha…

Vishal:
Yes, Good things happen with good people. Your IT team is now a champion on how best to use BLACKbox. It feels great to have exceeded customers’ expectations. Do you know, we have got so many valuable inputs from your IT team on our product development roadmap and we have implemented it in BLACKbox.

Sir:
I am glad if it has happened. I appreciate this practice to keep updating with customers’ wishlist. We are in process to replace our existing IT investment to BLACKbox as and when it is phased out at our Rajkot and other plants.

Vishal:
That’s so encouraging to learn. I am going to share this with my readers. What message would you like to give to them?

Sir:
We industrialists have to market our capabilities to earn the confidence of Global Customers in terms of our team, technical skills, infrastructure, values, financial strength. Now, three more aspects are added to this list, which is, IT Standardization Level, Investment Data Loss Prevention Tools, and Data Leakage / Theft Prevention Capabilities. I think investment in BLACKbox tick-marks all of them on capability demonstration for consideration of potential Global Customers in our Automotive Parts Industry.

Signing of now, next time, I am meeting an eminent charter accountant and will have such interesting interaction.

Best Regards,

Vishal Shah
Founder and CEO,
Synersoft Technologies Pvt Ltd