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Hot Seat
A legacy of learning
The entrepreneurial seed was always there, sown by his family
ambience. The decision to stay connected with his school, an individual choice.
Meet Vardhman Jain, Managing Director, Perot Systems, Insurance and Business
Process Solutions operations in India and Manila, in a tête-à-tête
with Renuka Vembu
Vardhman Jain |
It was a family effort in guiding, shaping and walking with
him as Vardhman Jain realized his dreams and aspirations. The family picture
was painted like this—father, a first generation entrepreneur, who built
a mid-sized construction business, mother, a social worker who taught him the
value of setting goals and striving hard to achieve them, and brother, a guide
who had his vision and road map ready for the future. Born and brought up in
Chennai, Jain had the constant mentorship of his mother, who is a part of several
NGOs and brother, Anurag, who could clearly foresee the potential of the BPO
industry.
Jain studied at Sishya School, in his birthplace Chennai, an institution he
still remains in touch with. The holistic approach it furnished for student
development and encouragement towards creative thinking still bears its mark
with Jain. BSc in statistics from Loyola College, and later BSc in computer
science from the University of Austin, Texas, Jain finished off his educational
drive. The latter, he admitted, provided him the perspective on building applications
that created business value and the statistics degree proved to be helpful as
he could now apply the learning to operations management in the services industry.
The journey begins
His stint of working with Dazel Software as a quality assurance engineer taught
him some of the best learnings to learn, deal with and stay put in the corporate
world—workplace politics, understanding of software applications to help
create efficiencies, continued pursued determined efforts to bring in the success
factor, that the best of works cannot be camouflaged for long, and that truth
needs to be unraveled, everything cannot be taken at the face value and things
are not always as they appear at the first glance.
Jain came back to India to lead the service delivery for one of the two companies
his brother had founded. He proudly asserted, “My brother provided me the
business education, his long-term vision of the business process services industry,
need for technology solutions that transform the services and the faith that
his vision will turn into a reality helped us see through the initial years
when we were building the company. It is amazing how Anurag had a clear road-map
for the evolution of the industry even about five-seven years before he founded
his BPO company.”
Taking charge
Today as the Managing Director for Perot Systems, Insurance and Business Process
Solutions operations in India and Manila, he is responsible for the entire delivery
and financial performance of India and Manila-based BPO operations, which currently
spans more than 60 clients in healthcare, financial services and finance and
accounting markets. He added, “I think the biggest challenge was in building
the business to where it is today and in the process, creating a strong foundation
that is technology and metrics driven in terms of its management approach. It
is good to reflect back on how some of the technology innovations went on to
become enterprise scale application platforms creating a completely paperless
service delivery environment. The team shares the vision for automation and
has helped me architect a completely automated business process systems suite,
including knowledge management, workflow management and Employee Relationship
Management amongst other. This has helped us create a delivery model that is
responsive to changing needs of our associates and customers and is completely
transparent to them in the way it is designed.”
With a conscious attempt to build scalable processes and systems, Jain is vying
for market leadership in each industry vertical they operate in today and is
looking at expanding the service lines. He believed that while looking at alternate
destinations across the globe to set up facilities in low cost centres, the
real value for the customer comes from the ability to create market leadership
for them.
While the BPO industry is driving significant changes in the country, resulting
in urbanization and globalization, it is also leading to a rising disparity
in the income levels of the haves and the have-nots. Jain opined, “Leveraging
technology to build the same divide which it has created and driving practical
education to help people succeed amidst this change is something I believe firmly
in. In my spare time, I work with some of the NGOs that my mother is associated
with to help promote education and technology implementation in rural areas
of India.”
The leader
As a leader, Jain believed in diligently selecting the right second line of
leaders and building a team that shares the same excitement, similar principles
and a strong passion, providing the right framework to exploit their potential
and breeding them in an environment of unquestioned integrity. Space for experimentation
and mistakes thereof, transparency in communication, fair treatment, non-intrusive
feedback and being available whenever the team needs guidance is Jain’s
methodology of helping his team excel.
As a child, Jain was interested in philately and numismatics. He has built a
strong collection, which he hopes will be of some value in the next 10-20 years.
His current passion however lies in building/construction; seeing a building
concept being brought to life and enjoying managing construction projects is
what he would love to do.
renuka.vembu@expressindia.com
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