Hot Seat

History in the making

Immediately after a press conference, Sam Santhosh, President and CEO, Calsoft sits with Renuka Vembu to talk about his work and life. Even in the midst of professional commitments and interviews in the coming hour, he talks at length about himself, his work and ambitions, as candidly and sportingly as he admits his mistakes

He was born and brought up in God’s own country, Kerala. Sam Santhosh never went beyond the boundaries of his local town Trichur till his engineering days. It was MBA that took him to the esteemed institute, IIM Kolkata. It was the first time he had stepped out of the conditioned background to visualize the outside world for himself. His father was a disciplined person, being professor and principal of a college, and this explains for Santhosh’s strong academic background and sharp educational focus. But his father’s strict regiment was confined only to the college campus. Inside the four walls of Santhosh’s home, there was always an ambience that encouraged radical thinking, exchange of ideas and gave him the freedom of thought and actions.

He was inclined towards entrepreneurship and being a true professional, did not mind the risk elements attached to it.

The first person from his family to take the business route, Santhosh’s mother was not very keen, but he had the liberty to follow his aspiration. The Indian market during the mid-80s was still in its nascent stages. The IT boom had not yet gripped the nation, and computers were just entering the market.

The beginnings

Santhosh specialized in MIS (Management Information System) and started computer centers in his hometown. But since the local markets were not very developed, he went off to the ‘obvious destination,’ USA, to make a mark of his own. In California, with a handful of five employees, no financial support or venture capital, he started a company called Calsoft, the name indicative of California Software.

It was a well-planned step and structured with minimal risk involved. Impressed by the performance of this tiny group of people, a mid-size venture Chemoil, invested in them as a token of appreciation, starting off their long standing association as a business partner and customer.

Many challenges

Santhosh modestly explains, “Technology was my passion. I had no fascination for enterprise. Our company’s DNA lay in technology. Big brands like HP, Nortel and Sony gave us projects because they perceived us to be technically good and effective.”

But during this phase, he also candidly admits that they missed out on several waves of IT like body shopping and Y2K. They were happy being a small profit venture and did not feel the need to compete with larger players or earn higher returns. Incidentally, they were the first company to break the AutoCAD format. But Santhosh did face his share of troubles—he was handicapped because Calsoft was not CMI certified, the R&D products dried up, and they served mainly companies in the US. Their office in India was used more as a recruitment and R&D center. A re-look at the business plan underlined the need to find alternate ways of re-building the company. He continued, “The big companies became too big to invest in us. There were very few medium-sized companies. And the small companies were too small to invest in IT.”

Thus, the dotcom buzz gave the first real shock to Santhosh. He realized that they were left far behind and the indispensable need to establish a platform on the enterprise side dawned on him. They had to start off, get certified and build a broader base for themselves. This situation called for other ways to plan their strategy since it was too late for them to build everything on their own. With availability of good technology and some money, they acquired seven companies within a span of three years. These acquisitions have taken them to the threshold from where they can now build more products and solutions and grow beyond a reasonable size. Value addition and value innovation has becoming crucially important than the traditional offer of lower costs and off-shore centers.

Personal passions

Santhosh likes playing tennis and badminton. He is abreast with both science and history, stirring up quite a contradictory combination. After indulging in reading for all these years, he now wants to pen his thoughts and write a book.

A couple of themes that have been playing on his mind are focused on bringing to the fore India’s rich intellect, culture and heritage, which have been manipulated and misunderstood. Also, he wants to inform people about the rising India and the opportunities available in our own land. He said, “The 2000 years of mental slavery has become a cultural baggage that we are still carrying. We are allowing ourselves to be subjugated rather than grabbing the advantage in hand. Our pre-eminence times were creditable with intellectual geniuses. Our first emperor was Chandragupta Maurya, but we do not know enough about him apart from the bit written in history text-books. We need to read the Vedas and Upanishads, but not follow them blindly, know about more radical thoughts other than Jainism and Buddhism, which have emerged and survived. There was freedom of openness and thoughts at that time, which people now are finding it difficult to come to terms with, with closed minds. I want to tell all people to respect our ancient greats and take advantage of the current position.”

Santhosh ends with an anecdote that highlights the state of apathy in which we are living. He concludes, “I had been to Delhi and wanted a glimpse at the two Ashoka pillars. While I could locate one of them, the other was just at the road-side and people in the same area did not know of its existence and it was surrounded by monkeys. We need to show respect, appreciate, recognize and transmit those ideas in whatever individual ways we can.”